A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

by Spike368

Sent out to gather the knowledge of the real world. A young scholar from the University of Oxenfurt finds a wounded Witcher on the steps to the inn where he was staying. So he starts gathering the material for his journals. Rated T for language I will be publishing this story on Royal Road /profile/349358

102. Chapter 102

(A/N: Some people are, doubtless, aware of who VOC are. For those who aren't in the know, this is explored in this chapter. I should also say that this exploration only scratches the surface and there are some very deliberate untruths and inconsistencies. This is justified to me because the observer was just passing through and was unable to properly do their own research on the subject. So what I'm saying is, for those who know more, please don't jump down my throat for historical inaccuracies?

Pretty please?

It is a fascinating subject though and I would heartily recommend looking it up if you want to know more.)

"What does it mean?" Ciri began. "What does it stand for? Those three letters. VOC?

"First of all, the important thing that you have to remember is that all of this took place in another world and in another time. Much of my information comes from other sources and camp fires not unlike this one. Where beer, wine and ale are passed around in glass bottles rather than the leather skins that we use today.

"So what did it stand for?"

She shrugged.

"It stood for "Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie". But if you can understand that then you know more than I do and you should be standing here and telling this story instead of me. I have no idea what those letters or words mean but I know that what it really was was a symbol of ownership. In the same way that farmers brand their cattle and livery stables brand their horses, the VOC would stencil their mark onto their ships. And not just their ships either. Everything that belonged to them would bear that legend. "VOC" Whether it was the letters that they sent to friends or loved ones, rivals or enemies. All of them would be written on paper that was labelled with that symbol. VOC.

"The crates that carried their cargo had those letters inked on the side. Bales of cloth were wrapped in canvas that had the symboland what it was, what it really was was a threat and a promise. It was a symbol that said that should anyone take anything, should anyone damage the goods that were contained in these crates and bags and bales, on this ship or on this wagon or on any of the other amazing ways that men would use to transport their goods around the world on which they lived. Then the wrath of the VOC would be certain, absolutely certain to come crashing down on the attackers house.

"You might be thinking that this meant that soldiers and warriors would arrive. Maybe a mages lightening bolt or fireball would appear and destroy everything that was there. But these people were nastier than that. Their vengeance was such that they believed that vengeance thus executed was only half done. They wanted you to be thrown out of your home. Your goods taken away from you. Your wife and children thrown into poorhouses where they would work in what amounted to slavery until old age, physical injury and disease would break them. It was only when they had taken everything away from you, that they would come after you personally. Only when everything else was gone, would men come for you in the middle of the night and give you a death that would be talked about and discussed where folk gathered for the rest of days.

"Because the VOC were not a nation. They were a trading company. Not unlike the Silesian league of merchants out of Vizima, or the Coulthard trading company or any of the others that sail upon your waters and up and down the coastline.

"But these people were bigger. Far bigger. Try and imagine a trading company that belongs to a nation the sizeof Kaedwen that is so powerful that only they have the right to trade with the entirety of Nilfgaard. And if any other trading company from Kaedwen tried to trade with Nilfgaard then the army of Kaedwen would be under obligation to destroy the errant trader in question.

"They were called "The Dutch East India Trading Company" or at least that's what the people that I was staying with at the time called them. This was not to be confused with the East India Trading company, which was apparently a different trading company belonging to a different nation, or the French, Danish, Austrian or Portugese East India Trading companies. All of which belonged to the French, Danish, Austrian and Portugese, wherever the hell they were.

"I also don't know where India was. Or what was so important about the eastern bit of it and why so many strong and powerful nations were so interested in trading with that area. But from what I was told, it was a beautiful place which brought in tea, spices, silks and all kinds of other luxuries that simply couldn't be brought into the areas in which I was travelled otherwise.

"I do know that each of these companies competed with each other in order to get the goods back from wherever East India was and bring them back to their home ports. And then to bring them into other ports where they would war with each other about getting the most custom and make the most money. It was not a war of sword blows or arrows fired. I understand that there were fists, and blades used occasionally but... Oh I don't know. Maybe Lord Frederick can tell you more about how these things work, even though the power and size of the VOC would dwarf even his families trading company as well as many of the other trading companies that exist in the North combined.

"And the south for that matter.

"I can tell you that the distances travelled were vast though, through stormy seas infested with Pirates. But also storms, climate and diseases for which we have no name. Try and imagine a nation beyond Zerrikania. Then try and imagine a nation beyond that and then another nation beyond that. That is the kinds of distances that we are talking about needing to travel and for all I know they were travelling even further than that.

"The point is that competition was fierce. And these trading companies would do anything they could. Absolutely anything that they could in order to make the journey quicker. Remember that this wasn't a world where the sailors didn't know what was beyond their horizon. They knew what was there and that there were no dragons waiting for them. So it was all about getting the goods back to the main land, what they considered the cradle of civilisation, as fast as was possible.

"So they specially trained their captains on the best routes to take, where the best prevailing winds and prevailing currents were. They trained the crews as well, teaching them how the stars worked and trained them in order to be able to load and unload faster. Conditioning them so that the ships would be able to go further and go faster and so that if a man should die of thirst, disease or hunger. Or any of the other awful conditions aboard ship, then the ship could still be run by a vastly reduced ships company.

"That kind of attrition was built into the merchants bottom line. And there was always enough sailors willing to take on the journey. Because if they returned. If they were one of the lucky few that made it back alive. Then their wealth would be considerable and they could retire in comfort.

"But perhaps the most important way that they would compete was in ship design and building. As I say, there were many ways in which a ship could be varied according to the needs of the voyage and it was all a constant balancing act. One of the most important was the need to carry as few crew as possible. The more crew that you had to carry, the more food for the crew that you had to carry, the more drinking water and the like. Therefore, the more crew and food you had to carry, the less cargo that could be carried. The less cargo, the less profit and so on and so on.

"So technological advances in sailing meant that a much larger ship could be sailed by a much smaller crew. But they were also build to balance speed and size. Masts were build that carry six times the amount of sail that the Wave-Serpent can carry. Six times and these ships would often sail with two or three masts rather than the Wave-Serpent's one. When I was there, I even heard rumour that someone was working on a four masted ship but I didn't believe that. Neither did the man who I was speaking to.

"The lines of the ship were adjusted so that a ship could cut through the water easier while still being stable enough to survive the storms. The methods of building were shifted to improve sea-worthiness. Lots of changes. Lots of changes that I did not understand and can no longer remember.

"But what all of this meant was that if you saw a ship on the horizon. Even if it was so far away that you had to use some of their magical devices to see it, then you would still be able to see who it was. What this meant was that if you saw a ship, even before you saw the "VOC" painted on the side of the ship, you would know who these ships would belong to.

"The sailors of that world called them different things. Most names were derogatory and come back from stories that I never knew and pieces of logic that I didn't understand. I would hear about Frogs and Rosbifs, whatever they are, and even more terms that do not translate easily. What I do know, is that when a sailor caught sight of a ship that would later be proven to have the symbol of the VOC on the side...

"He would call that ship a "Dutchman"."

There is a mythical quality to Ciri. She is...well... difficult to describe in that way. A number of people have been indelicate enough to ask whether or not there has been any kind of romance between the two of us, or whether there might have even been a hint of such a thing.

No there isn't and no there wasn't and no there will never be.

For a start, I love Ariadne. I thought that I had made that plain by now.

Secondly, there is too much... It's almost as though there is too much there for anyone to Love. She is too much. She is clever, intelligent (two separate things) beautiful, charming, powerful, strong, friendly and utterly without compromise. There is steel in that woman. Steel and a great capacity for... well... everything.

Which is why I say that she is almost too much.

The other thing is that she is never what you expect. Ever. When you see her your perceptions and your impressions shape your judgement. Whether she's dressed like the Empress or dressed like some kind of a warrior, you expect one thing and then you get the other. It's almost as though she is incapable of being who you think she is. When she gets it into her mind, then she swears at length and with venom. I've seen her do it in both the finest silks that the Empire can dress her Empress in. But I've also heard her curse while having to hold her hair out of the way as she puked her guts up after trying to keep up with Torvald's drinking.

She has seemed like the dirtiest, most foul mouthed and uncouth person in the finest silks while I've also seen her stand forward into the status and the carriage of an Empress, with all of the airs and graces that come with that when her shirt is covered in mud and there is cow shit and old vomit in her hair.

When she speaks, her voice is not what you expect. I found it a little higher in pitch than what I was expecting. The way she moves is part warrior, all on the balls of her feet, long stride and with perfect balance and a predator's grace. But it is also part high lady, with a carriage and an upright posture, as firm and unbending as a soldier's spear. But also part street urchin, the way she keeps darting her head from left to right, always has her back to the wall and keeps checking as to where the exits are.

She can keep a stony face, appearing unsurprised and calm when magic, monsters and enemies attack. Or at the height of a court appearance by Zerrikanians who are trying to wring trade concessions out of her. But she can giggle and splutter with surprised laughter when someone makes an accidental dirty comment.

I've literally heard her snigger in the middle of a conversation and cackle "heh heh. You said Butt."

I suppose that my point is that I feel as though there is too much there for me. I'm not sure that I would like the mercurial mood shifts. Not just from happy to angry to intense to giggling in the sun. But also from the intense concentration and focus that can be turned into a point so sharp that you can almost feel it draw blood. All the way down to the relaxed woman that enjoys singing dirty drinking songs with the men who are sharing a camp-fire with her.

There is just too much there and although I like, and love, Ciri a lot. As I think I've said before, I find that I think of her as two separate people. There is Ciri, the woman who is worming her way into my family and my affections the same way that a sister would. But there is also the Empress, the ruler of Kings. The cold, hard and austere personage than can decide the fate of nations. I think that I could love one of those people, but not the other and she deserves to be loved and to have someone that can love all of her.

Some people might wonder what the difference is between her and Ariadne in that regard. Ariadne is also intimidatingly beautiful, terrifying in her presence, fierce in her intelligence, secure in her power. All things that Ciri also is.

I suppose that one possible suggestion is that I met Ariadne first although I think that that is unfair to both women. And me for that matter.

But I love all of Ariadne. I love her hunger to know things and I relate to that a lot better. I'm just thinking on paper here so don't quote me on any of this. But Ciri wants to fix everything and I sometimes wonder if that desire will kill her. Ariadne wants to know everything but has the patience to let all of that come to her naturally and over time.

I used to think of loving Ariadne, or allowing myself to love Ariadne as being like loving some kind of all devouring hole. A great big mouth that was sucking me in and that if I allowed myself to love her then I would not be able to hold on to my life, my sanity or my... mind. Of course, since then, I still think this way, but I am more comfortable with the idea that Ariadne will catch me as I fall into that loving madness and that she will be falling with me so that we might fall together.

And sometimes, when you fall, you learn to fly.

But with loving Ciri, it would be like loving the sun.

All over the Empire, worshippers of the Sun will be applauding that metaphor. But it's true. In loving Ciri it would be like loving the sun. In that, it is big and powerful but if you get too close to it, you run the risk of being burned.

And also, how can you expect the sun to love you back?

One day, she will choose someone to love, if she hasn't already, and that person will be a very lucky person indeed.

But that night, as Ciri stood up in front of the fire after throwing off her fur lined cloak, casting aside her blanket and told us about the Dutchman and the VOC. She stood there, her silver hair burnished a reddy gold in the firelight. Untied from the style that she normally uses with the hair tied to the back of her head, instead she let it cascade down her back. She stood there, her sword still on her back, small crossbow at her side and dagger on her hip. She looked like a warrior Queen of a bygone age. No that's not right, instead she looked like a Goddess. The kind of thing that sculptors say, "I did not carve that likeness, instead I released it from the marble that held it."

As she spoke, her spell entranced us all, describing to us some of her travels. I remembered to ask Professor Dandelion if he had ever given her any pointers about how to perform to an audience. Or maybe it was her father that had taught her that. How an Empress stands before a court and commands their eyes and ears so that it would seem impossible to them that the onlookers could ever watch, or listen to anyone else.

On and on she spoke and we listened, sometimes laughing, sometimes shaking with fear and all of us were intent upon her. If our enemies had came upon us that night, they could have just walked over us and there would have been nothing that we could have done to stop them.

That is if they themselves weren't entranced by the sound of her voice.

You have to understand from where all of this is born. The first time I travelled between worlds I did so with the aid of an already unstable portal in Nilfgaard. A place where anyone could have stepped through that hissing vortex and ended up somewhere... else. The next time I crossed between worlds I did so with the help of someone who you would not believe. The same can be said for the time after that and the time after that and the time after that.

Eventually though, that person and I were split apart and I had to make my own way. Jumping from one place to another, from one world to another and one time to another. If I could only tell you half of the things that I have seen you would reject the things I have said as being impossible. If I heard them read back to me, then I would agree with you. If I could tell you even some of the things that I have done. You would lock me away with the mad and the dispossessed and I would not say that you were wrong to do so.

But during that time of travelling I had a destination in mind. I had grown tired of waiting to be rescued while also coming to the realisation that the people that I was waiting to be rescued by were, themselves, in need of rescue.

I was desperate and afraid and alone. I had no idea how to use my abilities and so I jumped. I would realise that I was not in the place that I wanted, or needed to be and then I would jump again. Sometimes I would do so quickly, spending no more than a few moments in a time or a place, but other times I would be forced to spend more time there. Sometimes I would need to eat, or sleep and still other times I would need to just let myself rest. I had not yet learned that time was relative and that it did not matter how long I spent in those worlds and that I could easily return to the point that I needed to.

But I can see some eyes glazing over so I will not go too far into that.

Oh, if only I could show you some of the things that I have seen, or saw during that period. The truth be told that it was a lot, even for me and there were many times that I felt it all trying to overwhelm my reason and my heart. But I was desperate to return to that time and place where my family, those people that I love more than life itself, were being held so that I might save them.

I saw this world in the far future when the eternal frost had lain everything low. I saw this world in it's primal state before Human, Elf or even Dwarf had come to the shores of the continent and I hid, terrified from warrior patrols of the Vran. I knew kindness as well, I met a woman, whose language was strange to me, who gave me food, drink and a place to sleep while defending me from the gaze of lustful men. I think of her often and wonder if she ever thinks of me.

Eventually though, I was able to find a guide. A woman who stood on the edge of a lake and told me where and when I must go. And she told me to hurry.

I did as I was bid and the story of what happened that time is told by greater tale-spinners than I. There were some adventures and then, once again, in order to save those dear to me, I was forced to act. I knew that, in acting I would draw the attention of enemies to myself and so I needed to take steps. I am not ashamed to say that I fled. I was much younger then. Younger and less sure of myself. I needed training but most of all, I think, I needed practice.

I will not tell you everything that I did in that time. This time, instead of leaping randomly through space and time, I was fleeing in the general direction of "away". But in jumping, I knew that the use of that power would draw my enemy to myself. So this time there was another difference. This time I would leap to a place and I would stay there for a while. I would attempt to carve out a life for myself for a bit. To rest up, to see if I could find friends and allies against those things and people that were coming for me. But in the end, it was always the same. My enemies would find me and I would be forced to flee. For the protection of my friends if for no other reason.

But I miss some of them still.

I do not know how long I travelled through the worlds. I know that I visited many strange places. Sometimes I was only there for the blink of an eye and other times I was there for weeks or even months at a time. Especially early on when I still believed that I would be able to throw off my pursuers.

I was the advisor to a King. A man who I genuinely believe to be a great and good man but also proof that even if the man wearing the crown is incorruptible and good, it is also vital that the man and the woman standing next to him must also be great and good or the whole thing falls apart. It broke my heart when he was betrayed and I was forced to flee.

I saw a place, I could not stay for long, but I saw a place where the very air that we were supposed to breathe had been burnt off the world in some vast cataclysm that I could not understand.

You understand that I could talk like this for several hours with anecdotes of the times and places that I saw but we would be here until the sun rises and until the ice overtakes us and although you may be willing to hear such stories, I need to sleep at some point so instead I will tell you of the world that taught me about the Dutchman.

I liked that world and I visited it often. Including when I had little or no control over my powers. I have since guessed that this might mean that that world is close to ours in some way although I struggle to believe that humanity came from there. They are so different from us.

For a start, there is no such thing as magic there. Or if there is then it is a force that we would not recognise. Instead they are a people of industry and science. Magic cannot create the wonders that are imagined in dreams and so they must build those wonders for themselves. In doing so, their world trembles at the scope of their ambition.

I visited that world many times. Sometimes I saw them in the far future where horseless carriages fly across the sky carrying hundreds of people this way and that across the world. Where they build metal into their bodies, can replace eyes, hands and skin with an ease that I found terrifying. Where weapons are these small, crossbow like weapons that spit small pellets of metal that can cause more damage than the most powerful siege weapon. That time was a time of wonder and terror but I could not stay there for long as my enemies came for me.

I saw them in their pre-history when they dwelt in caves, barely able to create fire safely and the meat that they ate was eaten little better than raw. I was able to spend a bit more time in that, well, time as it had not occurred to my enemies that I might want to stay in so simple a time and place. I don't know what I must have looked like to the people that lived there. Like some kind of magica,l god like creature I suppose who was stupid enough to properly roast a rabbit and add things like Garlic and thyme to the roasting pot.

I liked that world. I found that the lack of magic on that world made life so much simpler for everyone involved. Although their capacity for self-destruction was undimmed in response.

But again, these anecdotes are unimportant.

I soon found that one of the ways to hide from my pursuers was to hide in places of squalor and poverty. The people that were chasing me were of royal birth and descent. They were well aware of my history and my bloodlines, so it simply didn't occur to them that I would be perfectly happy to stay amongst the common folk and work amongst the dust and the dirt in the poorer end of town.

I will not deny that it was unpleasant sometimes. Nor will I deny that I could only last so long before I would need to have a small break to have a bath and enjoy some of the finer things in life, but at the same time, I found that if I spent time amongst the fish-wives and the night-soil carriers... Then it would take them much longer to find me. And I was ok with those delays.

So I watched, listened and as has been said by some wiser than me, if you want to stay unnoticed and generally be left alone, then the best way to do this is to find an unpleasant job that no-one really wants to do, and just sit down and do it. In this particular case, the job I found was to sit, gut and clean fish. If you ever want a reason why I would prefer to eat things other than fish, then that is it. I mean I can, and when I do actually eat it, I can enjoy it. It's more that if there's a choice, or an option of something else to eat. Then I will take that option. It was ages and worlds before I could get the stink off me.

But in doing so, I learnt a lot more about the life that they led and about the world that they live in. I learned about the great trading companies of the world and about how the island that I found myself on liked to claim that they ruled the waves.

It was there that I learned how much humanity has in common. About the way that we will happily swallow the larger lie, but the smaller lies stick in our throats like fish bones.

That comment was deliberate.

We have the same tendency to worship Gods and Goddesses that, if you read the original texts, tend to be fairly nice, gentle and kind religions but that the entire thing gets spoiled when ambitious men, rather than spiritual people, get hold of the entire problem.

We have the same tendency to just want to keep our heads down, to stay of the way. That myth that everyone believes that "if you keep your head down, work hard and do as you are told, then they'll leave you alone."

That as well as sharing the delusion that any one of us can work our way up from the gutter to the rarefied heights of wealth, status and fealty. And when people are challenged on that subject, we always point to certain exceptions. Exceptions that only prove the rule as those self-same exceptions did so by being clever, taking advantage of the situations and, dare I say it in the presence of a man whose Grandfather was more than a little capable of doing these things, a certain willingness to step on the lives of those around us.

We believe that other people will fix our problems for us. And if you scratch most of us you will discover that the true religion of our people is the common coin.

(She smiled, a little ruefully)

And we also like to point out the flaws in other people without seeing those same flaws in ourselves.

But again, I am digressing from the main point.

As I say, I was hiding among sailing folk and I learned about these great trading companies. I learnt about the VOC and their efforts to trade with and colonise far away lands in order to bring more profit into the coffers of their home country and, obviously, themselves and each other. I learnt about the other competitors, some of the failed ones and some of those that were in direct competition. I heard about wars that were fought between these trading companies. Literal wars fought with sword and something called a canon.

Something that I understood to be some kind of ship mounted siege weaponry. Yes, ships were much bigger than anything that we have and yes, their siege equipment was much smaller and more compact than anything we could use.

Also more destructive.

The way the women that I worked with every day would tell it, there was blood on the seas that no-one ever knew about. That countries would nod and smile at each other while all of that blood poured into their own pockets in the form of Golden coins. They would take me down to the harbours of the place that I lived and showed me the ships. A forest of masts and acres upon acres of sail.

But the trade was what kept the world moving. And the virtues of the world were just beginning to shift. They had, rather thoroughly, mapped their world. It wasn't accurate at all but the ship's captains and pilots knew exactly how to navigate from one place to the next, so that was never in any doubt that they would turn up.

As I say, there were strange things out there at sea, but there were not the monsters that our sailors have to deal with. Their attackers were pirates, storms and the like.

It was also not a case that there would only be occasional traders that would make the journey. There were always traders going backwards and forwards. That was how these huge, national companies made their money and indeed, entire nation's economies depended on this trade. The more they could bring back, the more money they made after all.

There was not that much need for land and the majority of the land that they passed would not have produced a profit anyway. So the object of the exercise became speed. The faster the ship, the more her captain and surviving crew got paid.

You notice how specific I was about saying "surviving crew". As I say, one of the easy ways to increase speed was to cut down on weight. One of the ways of cutting back on weight was by reducing the amount of food that was for the crew. They knew that some of the crew would starve to death, or that there would be a stabbing or something which would reduce head count. This was also acceptable because it meant that the pay for the crew would have less people to spread it over.

But anyway, I'm getting drawn out onto a tangent again. This really is much harder than it looks.

Now where was I...?

Speed. Yes.

So the idea was that the faster that the ship could make it, the more that they got paid.

Some companies specialised in bulk, they didn't care about how long it took because they would have more of the luxury item to to sell. Others paid more for speed but couldn't sell as much. It was a constant hustle to find your right place in order to make the most amount of money possible.

And that is the basis for the story of the Ghost Ship.

The first time I heard the story, it was one of those stories that you hear in the tavern. I was waiting tables at the time, just making ends meet, the Landlords and landladies liked me as I was able to take care of myself and help throw out a lot of the drunkards last thing at night. I was never worried when I went home and I occasionally had opportunity to show my skills with weapons so after a while, no-one dared get fresh with me and it also meant that the other girls that worked in that tavern were safe as well.

After all, if the white-haired girl with the scar can cut your dick off faster than a falcon swoops then what can those other girls do? The Landlords liked it because it meant that their daughters would be kept safe from wandering hands.

But I heard a story that interested me. I still had a Witcher's ears. I was listening for news of spectres and the like because they were my enemies and a tavern was a good place to hear of anything strange going on. So I kept my ear to the ground and I overheard this conversation about a "Spectral Ship".

I was still being chased by the Wild Hunt and I wanted to know if this might be the Naglfar, searching the high seas for any sign of me. It was a quiet night so I made it my business to wander over and see if there was anything going on. I never found it a problem to get men to talk to me after all.

I was soon reassured of course, the thing that was described was far from anything that might be confused for the Naglfar. The Naglfar was a solid ship, with metal bones that reinforced the rib of the ship. This was... well let me tell you what they told me.

"He saw it he did. I'm telling you. He saw it before he set back out. It was a warning and he saw it and he didn't listen."

It should be said that her impression of a querulous older man and older sailor was impeccable.

"Oh come on. Everyone knows someone who's seen it. And everyone knows someone who knows someone. You know that as well as I do."

"But he SAW it I tell you. The Phantom ship."

That was when my ears pricked up as I'm sure you can imagine.

"Phantom Ship?" I asked, doing my best to be all wide-eyed innocence while at the same time, trying to gauge how fast I could get to my room where my sword and riding boots while also trying to figure out how long it would take me to dive out a window and leave them behind. One of the secrets about being on the run is to never carry anything with you that you aren't prepared to leave behind in ten heart-beats flat when you hear your enemy coming over the hill.

"Yes," The old man hissed. "My brother saw it. He told me, he did. He told me that he was coming over the equator, a good wind coming from So'sowest that was carrying his ship North at a rate of knots that his skipper were well pleased with.

"Then out of nowhere a storm blew up. A great dark cloud that towered like the fist of the devil his'self, standing dark against the sky and the wind started getting even worse but now it was changing direction, tossing my brother's ship this way and that, as though it was caught in a whirlpool. The skies darkened and the lightening flashed, standing dark against the waves and the dark sky. The men of the ship were fighting for their lives, trimming sail and doing everything to keep the boat alive, to keep her moving and to keep her breathing.

"But then she came. A huge ship coming out of the storm. A huge, spectral ship smouldering with the heat of hell, coming from what they guessed to be the North although they could no longer see the stars, or the sun or anything else that they could see in order to try and be able to tell which direction that they were heading. The sudden rain even made it difficult to be able to read the compass that they were carrying.

"On she came. The huge ship kept coming, glowing with a strange and ghostly light. Full and whole sails that billowed in a non-existent wind but, at the same time, carried the ship against the wind. It came within inches of my brother's ship. Inches I say but they felt no passage, no weight in the water and no passage of air. She sailed on and out of sight. Moments after it's passing, the seas settled, the wind calmed and the clouds lifted."

I remember nodding. As I say, there is no magic in that world. No monsters that I ever heard of although there were rumours of them. But then again, there are always rumours of monsters. But there were ghosts and spectres if you knew where to look. I was about to turn away when they told me the last part which piqued my interest. Not enough to make me afraid but enough to make me curious.

"Every sailor on that ship has died since." The old man said. That was enough to turn me around. I have heard of death omens before but nothing on that scale.

"My brother didn't make it back from his next voyage."

I remember it quite distinctly. I had been staying and living in this quiet world for some time and I suppose that I must have been desperately homesick. Not something that I could articulate or even, if we're being truthful with each other, something that I felt on any kind of real conscious level. But something in the story called to me. I suppose that it was the attraction of being a Witcher, even for a little bit. Just a small taste of home and a life that was familiar to me. To ask some questions about the haunting, to see what the haunting was centred on and to bend my will towards the solving of the riddle and the dismissal of the spirit.

I suppose it must have been like that first time of eating your mother's cooking when you return home. Or sleeping in your own bed after a long time elsewhere. It might not be the largest, most luxurious or comfortable bed in the world, but it is your bed and so it is comfortable.

It was the warmth of an old cloak and the embrace of an old friend.

I remember that I set down the steins of beer that I was carrying, sat down next to this old pair that had been talking and I started to ply the old man that had begun the story with questions. Everyone knows the questions. When was the spirit first seen? What did it look like? Did it glow? Was it a solid shape or translucent? What were the weather conditions surrounding the event? On and on my questions went.

Eventually I was called back to work but whenever there was a lull I returned to the old man to ply him with more questions. At first, he was pleased with the attention. There is a certain kind of old man who will do anything in order to keep the attentions of a younger woman, but he came to realise that I was not interested in him so much as I was interested in the knowledge that his mind contained about the spirit of this ship.

I was fascinated. At first my mind wanted to dismiss the idea. The ship showed none of the approved and common signs of being a spirit. It glowed with a red light as though aflame rather than a green one for a start but there were too many stories of the thing to be entirely and easily dismissed.

When the old man finally escaped, I devoted some time in an effort to try and find something else about this spectral ship. Their world was, as I say, relatively mundane. There was no magic, no monsters that I could ever hear about that didn't turn out to be a man dressed up, a man who was mad, a man who has altered himself in some way, or an animal that darkness, fear and pride has made into a larger beast than was actually present.

But the ghosts of the place. They do exist. They are rarer to be sure and they lack the power that our spirits and wraiths do but they are still dangerous. Therefore the spirits that can cause phenomenon as powerful as the death omen that had been described was interesting enough that there were many stories about this mysterious Dutchman.

Many of those stories were utterly false, as is so often the case in these kinds of situations.

But after a while, I began to find out those facts and stories that seemed to coalesce, those elements of the story that all other stories seemed to share.

What it seems is that these merchant ships would often travel in pairs. For mutual protection more than anything else and these two ships were sailing from a place far away from where I was living, working and hiding. Some place called "The orient" or wherever that was. Other people said that the ships were coming from "India" which I suppose would make sense given that the name of the company...

But I'm getting away from myself again.

These two ships were on their way back to Europe where they were based when an awful storm came upon them around a place called "The Cape of Good Hope". I have no idea why it was called that as generally speaking it seemed to have a really sinister reputation.

As I say, there were two ships. One ship took the lead where the other had suffered some kind of calamity which had reduced her speed in the face of the storm. So they took shelter presuming that their sister ship would seek similar shelter. When the storm passed and proper repairs had been carried out upon the hull of the damaged ship they set off on course again and brought their ship home.

Much to their horror, they discovered that their sister ship, the one that had carried on into the storm, had not been seen or heard from again. Much was discussed on the matter, in the same way that people will criticise the actions of a general in battle despite never having left the comfort of an arm-chair, people criticised the missing ship's Captain for not seeking shelter. It was clear to everyone involved that the ship had been lost as part of the storm. Probably through accident or from the hubris of their Captain and his determination to get home as quickly as possible in order to earn his bonus and some of the obscene amounts of money that they collected in the shape of bonuses for a speedy return.

After unloading and the cargo being sold, that ship that had taken shelter took to the seas again for the return journey, this time travelling alone. I understand that the course was almost straight south from their home port until they came to roughly the same part of the passage where they had lost their sister ship. Once again, a great storm blew up. But if anything, this one seemed more violent than the last.

At the height of the storm, as the Captain searched frantically for a place to take shelter and fought his ship and the waves, the lookout gave a cry and pointed.

Soon though, that pointing and the cry of alarm was made redundant as all there could see the shape that came out of the darkness.

It seemed to glow with a red light and shimmered, like the way that the air shimmers above a candle flame. The ghostly ship came close and the ship's company recognised their lost companions, they shouted to each other and waved and screamed. The men on the spectral ship called out, pleading for help, begging their friends to carry messages to their loved ones back at port and to pray for them for their souls were damned.

The Captain of the Ghostly ship stood before the tiller, his legs braced and his arms folded and said nothing.

The spectral ship sailed on, out of the view of the struggling ship and as it did so the waves calmed, the clouds parted and the ship was able to sail on it's way.

But not the lookout. As it transpired, his brother had been on the other ship and the two had spoken. The lookout opened his own veins with a sharp knife before throwing himself overboard.

(Ciri paused here for a long time, staring at the flames and we shifted restlessly. It was clear that she had more to say and we were eager to hear her say it. She looked up suddenly and the firelight was reflected in her eyes strangely. The firelight reflected of her skin, teeth and of her eyes. It made her look fiendish, wicked and more than a little terrifying. It was the kind of face that you see in nightmares and I still wonder if she managed that effect on purpose.)

We don't have a concept of a devil here. We know that there are things like demons in their many forms. We know about the Hym and the master of Mirrors. We have heard of so many other things as well. The living darkness and the thing known only as "Jack". But we do not have a concept of evil personified in one place or person. We know that the end of the world will come in ice and cold that freezes the marrows of our bones until we shatter. But on their world, evil and the end of all things is gathered into one place and in the form of one thing, of one man really. They call him The Devil. He is many things to them and they have many names for him. Many of which I will not utter here.

Why?

In case they were right and we were wrong.

He was the adversary. He was the root of all evil, while also a punisher of the wicked. He was the voice in your ear tempting you towards wickedness and evil. He was that part of you that wants you to strike your brother and rebel against your lord.

(Then she straightened and the small spell that she had woven was broken)

The truth is much more complicated than that and if you look at it hard enough, or think about it hard enough then many of the things that were said about him turned out to be things that had been made up by people in order to scare less educated people into doing what those in power wanted.

But to the common man, it was as though the Eternal Frost had been given form and personification. And the common folk drew back in fear at the mention of his name.

I suspect, as well, that some of the things that we call demons travelled to that world in order to have their fun. And that the stories of some of those creatures got caught up into one being. Or maybe they were in that world first before coming to ours.

But one of the characteristics of this "Devil" was that he would make bargains with people in exchange for their souls when they died.

You might wonder why I'm telling you all of this.

There were many stories told and reasons given as to why the ship had been cursed, why it had sunk or what happened to it. There were many explanations given as to why that ship had not made it through the storm.

At the time, one of the favourites of ship masters and ship owners was the rumour that they had been damned because the crew had risen in mutiny against their rightful masters in an effort to take the fabulous cargo for themselves. But this sounded like a self-serving prophecy to me. There were two stories that sounded like the kind of thing that could have cursed a ship and all of it's crew to this torment.

The first story was that the Captain of the lost ship was a man called Bernard Fokke. Although I could find little to no record of him when I went looking, I later heard that there is a statue of him in a place called Batavia although I could never find it. He was renowned for being the fastest Captain on that route and sailed a merchantman from Holland which was his home base in Europe, don't ask me why they called people from Holland "Dutchmen". As I say it was a strange world. "But he could chart and travel that particular trade route in a time that no other sailor could match.

He even once took letters from the governors of all the settlements along the route in order to prove that he had not found another source for the cargo that he was sent to fetch and therefore swindling the VOC out of their investment. He was so fast, that some sailors told stories that he had sold his own soul, as well as the soul of every man who had sailed with him to the devil in order to be able to make the passage at such speed.

This speed was fascinating to the people and it earned Captain Fokke a nickname. A name that has since been taken as the name of this ghost ship. He was called "The Flying Dutchman". That name is now taken as the name of the spectral ship that haunts the seas of that world and it is this titbit that suggests that he is indeed the Captain of that doomed vessel.

But that's what they call it. They call it "The Flying Dutchman", even as far as the last time I visited that world. They still called it that and it's name still sends shivers down the spines of sailors all over the world. Even though it, and the legend surrounding it has been turned into a story to frighten children.

The other root story said that the Captain of the doomed vessel is a man called Hendrick Van Der Decken.

I don't believe that story. I think that because it seems to originate with some kind of poet, or what passes for a poet in that world. I also don't believe it because the name of the phantom ship, according to all the people that I could find and talk to was "The Flying Dutchman" a name that had been attached to Captain Fokke and that seemed... just too persuasive and definitive a point to me.

Captain Van der Decken was rumoured to be a strict but fair Captain. He was the kind of man who kept a strict discipline on his ship and woe betide you if you did anything wrong. But if you kept your head down and worked hard then you would never have a cause to complain. He played no favourites and kept himself to a high standard that he insisted that his fellow officers abide by. Which meant that the men would tolerate the stricter punishments because they knew that if the officers stepped out of line then the Captain's justice would be just as swift and just as merciless as it would be towards the lowest seaman aboard the ship.

He was the kind of constant workman that military navies and merchant navies build their fleets on. He was never going to be flashy but if you gave him a job then you knew that it was going to get done.

I feel sure that I would have liked him.

If he did have a fault though it was that he would take any risk to get the job done. He was a man that was all about the end goal and nothing would keep him from that.

The story is very similar to the previous one and follows the facts quite closely. He and a sister ship were passing around the Cape of Good hope when the two ships hit a storm. The sister ship made for shelter in the harbour that is apparently near the place and urged Captain Van der Decken to take shelter. But Captain Van der Decken refused. He was dissatisfied with things on the grounds that the ships had already been delayed more than he was comfortable with and so he was determined to make it round the cape to where calmer seas were expected to be found.

So he threw his ship against the elements over and over again, flogging his men and his ship, determined to pass by the cape. Ship after ship came past him, seeing what was happening and urging him to seek shelter but over and over again he simply refused, pulling his ship round and trying again.

Eventually a smaller merchant ship came within shouting range of Van der Decken and pleaded with him, for the sake of his ship, his cargo and his men, that he should seek shelter from the storm. He responded, and I'm paraphrasing here as the language used was a little bit different to ours and our understanding.

"May my soul be forever damned if I take shelter. Even if I should end up sailing these seas until the end of the world."

Well... He never sought shelter. The storm increased in it's ferocity for some time until the ships that HAD taken shelter went out to look for him when the waves calmed. There was no sign of wreckage, no bodies and no floating cargo. So it would seem to the sailors of the world that he was indeed damned and that he will sail the seas until the end of the world. And so was born the Ghost ship that those sailors call "The Flying Dutchman".

I don't know which of these stories is true. I could never find definitive proof one way or the other. All I can say for certain is that they both could be true. For all I know, both are true and that there are, in fact multiple ghost ships that have been lost around the Cape of Good Hope in that other world and that those ships haunt the seas so that ignorant men call them all the same thing. It certainly sounds as though it might be the case.

And so it would be, if I hadn't seen the Spectre with my own eyes.

After a certain amount of time spent satisfying my own instincts and playing at being a Witcher in a foreign world, I found all that I could find. But suddenly and out of nowhere my enemies found me again and I was forced to flee to strange worlds and foreign lands anew. Again, I saw many things and took part in many varied and strange adventures that put the story of the Flying Dutchman completely out of my mind. But as always, my sight and my mind were brought back to that same world.

In a sense, once again, I was trying to play mind games with my pursuers. Trying to guess what they were thinking and trying to guess what they thought I would be thinking. I had yet to find my allies in the fight against the wraiths of Morhogg and as a result I was still massively outnumbered and massively underpowered.

So I returned to that same world. I had a certain fondness for it anyway, I knew the language and many of the customs but at the same time, I wanted to keep moving, within the world in an effort to keep myself from view.

So I went to the same place that I stayed before. Some of their own traditions about women being allowed aboard ship had been relaxed in the meantime. They shared the superstition of our world that women were allowed aboard ship providing that they were kept separate from the majority of the ship's company or were otherwise occupied. They were certainly never allowed to serve aboard a ship or to help sail it, but it was increasingly apparent that there were some things about life on the sea for which a woman was eminently more suitable to their way of thinking.

I took a job as a laundry maid aboard a ship called the Bacchante, where I served the heir to the throne of that country that I had spent so much time in. He was a young man then. He was in his late teens which, to that place and time, was in his late adolescence. But having said that, it was beneath his own dignity to do his own laundry as well as being beneath the dignity of his younger brother, his tutor and any of the other normal household staff that accompanied him.

So I managed to get myself taken on as a laundry maid. It wasn't that hard in all truth, the Imperial Guard would have been shocked at the lack of attention being paid to so simple a breach in security but still... I thought it might throw my pursuers off a little bit. They were well aware of my status as heir to several thrones and as such it would seem ludicrous to them that I might accept a position in order to do laundry.

We sailed, off. It was a long voyage as the Heir was shown some of his holdings so that he could learn a little bit about the world in which he was to become prominent and a man of power and ruler-ship. I have to admit that I liked him. He was a young man that seemed to prefer the simpler things in life and he was one of the few men on the ship that I did not have to dodge around when those self-same men were feeling a little randy. Some of my fellows saw no problem in the potential for a bastard child that might get them set up in life but I saw it as being, obviously, a little problematic.

But one day, the ship was shaken with a problem to do with the rudder. I have no idea what the problem was as there was no way that "a mere woman would understand the problems involved," and for all I know they were right. It was certainly a much more massive ship than I was used to and it certainly seemed that the bigger the ship was, the more things that there were to go wrong.

So the two princes were shipped over to a naval vessel that was nearby that was flying the flag of the home country. I don't know what the logic was. I suppose it could be argued that they were being protected against the possible attack by someone in case the damage to the first ship was as the result of some kind of sabotage. There was no panic on the ship though. It just felt as though it was one of those things where something had gone wrong and now life was being made difficult and more awkward for everyone involved.

I can say that I was lucky to not be left behind. It seemed that the two princes that we were travelling with couldn't possibly be expected to do their own laundry and the naval sailors would not know how to do the job properly so that the two young men would be able to present a proper and royal front to the world.

To their credit, I doubt that the two princes gave a crap about this kind of thing. Both of them were resenting the presence of their tutor who was trying to push both young men into higher intellectual pursuits for which neither showed the inclination. They were both too interested in fishing and playing cards during their journey. It wasn't that they struck me as lazy men. More that they just didn't care enough to be dealing with higher literature and philosophy when they could be learning about the lands that they were travelling through by interacting with the people directly.

That seemed to be a funny idea in that culture but there you go.

So myself and a couple of the other ladies were taken over to do duty on the new ship that was called the HMS Inconstant. Which I thought was a very odd name for a ship, especially a military one.

It was in the early hours of the morning when it happened. It was still dark and it was during what passes for winter in that particular part of the world. Maybe mid to late winter so the seasons were just about beginning to be on the turn. As I say, it was a military vessel with a military vessels drills and work to be done. We didn't have much room for privacy and I shared my cabin with the other women that had come over with the Crown Prince's party that had come to see to the linen and things. We were guarded day and night so that none of the military folk would "take advantage of us" but all three of us woke with a start when the bells started ringing.

We had been warned what that meant. That particular bell was never rang unless there was an emergency and that the military men were called to their combat positions. We had been told to remain where we were and I had every intention of following those orders if we're being honest with each other. I just lay there and found the handle of my dagger under my pillow and felt for the lump of my sword hidden under the mattress. I was perfectly content to wait where I was until we were instructed to do something else. But then something else happened.

It sometimes surprises people to learn that I actually carry a Witcher's pendant from the feline school. The story of how I came by that pendant is a long and boring one so I won't go over it again. I wore it round my neck under my night shirt and I used to hide it under my uniform. I had found that I could no longer sleep without being able to feel it close to my skin. I have to keep it as it was my only warning if the wild hunt was coming for me.

I felt that medallion jerk at it's chain. I was already awake but my reaction to such a tugging was ingrained and learned through toil and hardship. I have learned that behaviour with much pain and I was out of bed in a moment. Suddenly the sounding of the alarm bell came with much more context and I was sure that this meant that the Naglfar, the ship of the Wild Hunt had been sighted and the naval vessel that I was on was getting ready to deal with it.

I leapt from my bed, discarding my night dress as I went. I always travelled light and I pulled out what I think of as my travelling gear and put it on in the pitch-darkness. I strapped my sword to my back and my dagger to my side, admonished the whimpering women to remain quiet as I slipped out the hatchway. I was prepared to deal with the sentry that was normally guarding our door, an older man getting ready for retirement on the grounds that he would be less likely to succumb to our feminine charms, but he wasn't there. Presumably gone off towards his own duty station.

So it was not hard to make my way up to the deck and the open air.

Some people might be wondering why I didn't just teleport away when I first felt the potential presence of the Wild Hunt. There are any number of reasons as to why I didn't. Some of it is tactical, the medallion wasn't jerking particularly hard which meant that the Wild Hunt were still some distance away. Which, in turn meant that I could take a good look at what was happening and decide my best course of action. Maybe it was just one wraith and his hounds. So if I slew them, then maybe that would help throw off pursuers, even for a moment and when you're fleeing, every moment that they don't know what is happening can make the difference between life and death.

Also, I still didn't know how to use my powers too well, so I sometimes got irrationally superstitious about it and I wanted to teleport from outside.

Also also, I was curious.

There are any number of reasons as to why I chose to go and see what was going on.

As I say, it was not hard. Even though they were, in perspective, more advanced than we are, they were still human and all humans seem to have the same blind spots when it comes to people sneaking about. I made it to the top deck and hid behind one of their life boats.

They keep spare boats on deck to be used in the case of a need to abandon ship. Their ship was large enough to make such things practical.

(Looking around the camp fire, I wasn't the only one whose mind boggled at the use of such space. Many ships have single boats for fishing or carrying people ashore but enough boats to carry the entire crew ashore. That seemed a little wasteful. It's one of the reasons that my sister doesn't like travelling by sea. It's that, if the ship goes down, then you're done for)

So I hid and then started to look around. There were lots of people running this way and that, people were shouting and yelling and pointing. The kind of thing people do when they are under threat.

At first though, I thought that I had wildly misread the time. The eastern sky was bright and glowing red and for a moment, just a tiny moment, I thought that the sun was rising and it was dawn.

But then I saw differently. Just as quickly, my fear that my medallion was warning me of the attacks of the Wild Hunt was dismissed.

What stood on the horizon was like a glowing red flame. I wondered, as most will know, spectres glow with a green light but in this case that was not what was happening. The Glow was red and my medallion was jerking. I watched in awe, my first real defined sight of the supernatural in that world. I had seen many strange things but I had never actually seen a spectre, spirit or monster that could not be explained away by the denizens of the world or the application of some common sense.

Soon the shape began to resolve into being the outline of a ship began to form. At first it, seemed to me that the flame became brighter and that that brightness took on the form of the ship. Masts and rigging coming out of the flame. But then the ship seemed to emerge from the light. The brightness resolving as though the ship was just coming into focus so that we could all see it.

It was sailing towards us. Wailing cries started to be carried over to us. It seemed to me that it was the wailing of a monster. The sound that a griffin makes when it is hurt and starts to fear for it's life. The sound that a dog makes when it sees it's master walking out the door at an unexpected time.

Then, like the ship coming into focus out of the flame, the wailing seemed to focus into dozens of men's voices drifting across the water.

(Ciri stared into the flames for a long time.)

"Help us" they were calling. "Help us." It was hard to tell at first because I didn't recognise the language. I thought it might have been similar to the more ancient forms of language that the Kaedweni use. There was a similar cadence to it but I couldn't really make it out. Then it was as though the men on that phantom ship realised that we weren't hearing them. Or that we couldn't comprehend.

So then they tried different languages. Later, someone suggested that it had been dark and so they couldn't see the flag of the nation that the ship belonged to, but when they got closer, they realised who we were.

Because there were men on that ship. As they got closer we could see them moving about on the ship. They dressed lightly, shirts and trousers with the odd neck scarf, the odd hat or cloth tied over the top of the skull. It was sailor's clothing from somewhere like two, or even three hundred years ago for that world.

They were yelling at us now. Pleading with us for help.

A young man, I didn't know who he was, apparently he was one of the lookouts that had first spotted the phantom vessel called out what the men wanted.

"Carry word of us," one man called. "Carry our letters," another yelled. The sailors that I was with looked to each other and many nodded or agreed and then small packages started to be thrown over, small bundles of paper tied together with bits of string, or all contained in a parcel of sail cloth. They made solid enough sounds as they hit the deck and skittered this way and that way.

I still didn't know what was happening. In a gesture that I remember my father using, I had tugged my medallion out from underneath the shirt where it rested and was peering at it as it jumped about. The movements seemed... odd. The metal of the medallion moved differently in some small way that I could not define. It felt... It was as though the metals vibrations were different... I can't explain it and it is futile to see.

Our ship's company was coming onto deck now, away from the guns and their other posts but I wasn't watching that. Instead I was watching the ship. Now that it was much closer it was as though the air between was was hazing with the heat. It seemed as though there was smoke rising from the ship itself as it moved and you could still see the flames behind it.

The people of that world would call it the flames of damnation but I am not giving to that kind of poetry.

I looked up and down the ship and I realised that I was looking at that old ghost ship that I had half forgotten about. Details of memory can be funny things and it was as though they floated to the top of my consciousness in the same way that bubbles of air float to the top of marsh mud.

The size and shape was consistent with the kinds of ships that the VOC would send into the ports in which I worked, sure enough, you could see the stencilled symbol of VOC on the prow and the ship sailed under the flag of that, now defunct, trading company. It sailed as though it was answering to a different sea to the one that we were actually on. A different current and a different wind, maybe even a different world as she was certainly sailing against the direction that we were going.

There was little doubt in my mind that I was looking at the Flying Dutchman.

I did feel a chill run down my spine as I looked at the Captain though. He stood there in dark overcaot next to the steering wheel. Legs apart, arms folded with a white ruff around his neck and the odd, almost conical wizard's hat with the top cut off, perched on his head. He had a sword at his side and one of their explosive crossbows on his belt. He alone among his crew seemed unafraid. He alone stood firm and unmoving although he did move with the churning and tossing of his deck. He was some distance away but I felt that he had a stern face, lined with frown marks and a grimace.

But then he turned to look at us, his eyes sweeping over our decks and although the other men on the spectral ship seemed to be normal, or relatively normal humans. The Captain seemed as though he had smouldering coals in the place of his eyes. I thought I could see them glowing with a dull red light and small tendrils of smoke drifted away from them. In the same way that there is a stream of smoke from an overlong wick in an oil lamp.

"The Flying Dutchman." A sailor standing near me moaned. Another agreed.

But then he turned and reached for his steering wheel and it seemed to me that the ship faded away like mist in a sunbeam.

Now the eastern sky really was beginning to lighten and as though I was being shaken from a dream I looked over to the rest of the deck to see what was going on with the bundles that had landed on the deck.

Which was when I saw the prince stooping to reach for one.

There's a technique to screaming properly. Proper support from the midriff and an explosive expulsion of air while at the same time holding enough back that you can still act, or continue the scream as it is needed. I used every trick in my arsenal to be able to make my scream felt, as much as it was heard. There was a boat hook nearby and I threw it at the small bundle of letters next to the prince like a javelin. I threw it as hard as I could and followed up by running at him.

He staggered back. Men around him were shouting. Weapons were being drawn and pointed at me but I was beyond thinking properly by this point. I had reached that stage of being that Father once described as being "Witcher tunnel vision" where you are so obsessed with saving the person, even despite their own efforts and that was what was happening here. I was so sure, so certain as to what was happening. I couldn't tell you why but I was absolutely convinced that the bundles of letters carried the curse with them and that anyone that picked them up would be dead within the day. I do not know why I knew this. But it seemed, obvious to me.

So I acted. I am sure that my mother would be furious with me. Putting myself in harms way for a foreign Prince but, you do what you do when you find yourself doing what you do.

I reached the prince and tucked my shoulder, forcing him back from the letters. I heard the breath explode from his lungs and he staggered backwards and fell but I spun, drawing my sword.

"No-one touch the letters." I bellowed. Still with all the power that I could muster. I stood with them between my feet, sword poised and ready. The soldiers were levelling their weapons at me and I was at bay.

If I attacked then I was dead, but the first one to attack me would also be dead. It was a dangerous moment.

I must have looked like some kind of alien creature to them then. Like Nilfgaard was, and still is in some places, their women are taught to be seen and not heard. So suddenly, a woman in trousers and shirt with a drawn longsword must have been like a creature from another world.

"What is the meaning of this?" The man that I knew as the Princes tutor stepped forward. "How dare you attack a Prince of Wales in such a fashion. Guards? Take her away..."

I readied myself but the Prince spoke. "Hold," he was being helped back to his feet by his younger brother. A couple of the soldiers looked at each other in confusion. "I said, Hold." The Prince said again when he had climbed to his feet. "I will not say it again."

He was a young man, as I say. Maybe Sixteen or Seventeen. He was a thin young man and although handsome he had shown an utter lack of interest in those maids that might have gone for that kind of thing.

His Younger brother was cut from a similar stock, maybe fifteen years of age.

The Prince walked forwards, through the ring of weapons and stood before me, considering. He struck me as the kind of man that likes to take his time when thinking of things. Sometimes that is a strength, but just as often it can be a weakness. But he looked in my eyes for a long time.

"You are an unusual looking Lady." He told me after a long while. His words quiet in the winter air. I noticed that, like me, he didn't seem to notice or mind the early morning cold.

"It has been said." I answered calmly, keeping my blade up but not pointing it at him. More just keeping myself in a defensive posture.

"I feel sure I should know you." He said after another long pause.

"I have spent a certain amount of time cleaning your linen." I told him. I was scanning the line of soldiers to see if there was any sign of a threat.

"Ah." He said quietly. He moved, attracting my eyes back to him. He was rubbing his forehead. "Yes." He said. "I really must be more observant about what goes on around me. Why must we not touch the bundles?"

I took a deep breath. These were people that valued science. They had banished magic from their world, if it had ever existed at all and so this might have been difficult.

"The ship that we just saw was cursed." I told him. "I believe that the things that came from it carry the same curse."

"Poppycock." The tutor said. I don't know what it means but context suggests that it meant that he thought I was talking nonsense. "Arrest her and..."

The Prince shook his head.

"So, if I picked up the letters?"

"I believe that you will die."

The Prince nodded.

"Then for now, we will leave them where they fell while we decide what to do. However madam, I must ask you to surrender your weapons. You will be taken from this place to a place of confinement while the matter is decided. I find that I believe you."

The tutor opened his mouth and the Prince almost smirked. "Or rather, I believe that you are telling the truth as you see it. But is it the subjective truth? I must discuss the matter. I stand guarantee for your safety and you will not be harmed. I give you my word."

For men like this, their word was their bond in such matters. I unstrapped my scabbard and handed my sword and dagger to the younger of the two princes who stepped forward with a smile. His smile broadened when I handed him a boot knife as well. Of the two, I found that I liked the younger Prince the more. He was a little less intelligent I thought but still a good man. He had a sense of humour about him.

I was taken away and led to what passed for a passengers cabin. The tutor protested saying that I should be taken to the brig but the prince responded that I was a lady and as such, had no business being in the brig.

The tutor pointed out my mode of dress but I didn't hear anything else.

In all truth though, I have had less pleasant confinements. I was in no real danger, I could have transported myself away at a whim and there would have been nothing that they could have done to stop me. The loss of my sword and dagger was a blow as I had, and still have, a certain attachment to those weapons. A young sailor came and enquired as to my needs. I was brought breakfast as the eastern sky brightened and it was considerably more than I was used to.

Abruptly though, my confinement came to an end a few hours later, as I was summoned To the Captain's cabin.

There were two guards outside. Fully armed and they showed me in. Inside the two princes were sat to one side, the Captain and his second in command were there, the Captain behind his desk and his second stood behind him. The tutor was also there and he was pacing backwards and forwards. It seemed that the Captain was in charge.

"Thank you for coming." He told me. "I apologise if I come across as being rude or abrupt but matters have progressed to an alarming degree and I must take action. Therefore I must beg you to tell us everything that you know."

If there was one thing that I didn't like about them was that they never said a thing in three words when they could say the same thing in twenty.

"This is preposterous," the Tutor began an I found that I was beginning to dislike him. I was being unfair though as it was clear that he was just doing what he had been trained to do. He was a man of science and was probably panicking as his rational world came crashing down around his ears.

I considered my response carefully.

"What has happened?" I asked. "it may be pertinent."

The Captain looked at me for a long time before glancing at his second, who shrugged.

"The lookout who first spotted the ship has died." The Captain told me. "A bundle of the letters was found on his person."

I nodded.

"How did he die?"

"Fell from the rigging onto the deck, died all but instantly."

I nodded again.

"The Ship is cursed." I told them. "I don't know much about it but from the look of things..."

"Preposterous." The tutor said again.

"From the look of things." I repeated. "I would guess that it is the Captain that is cursed and that he has dragged his ship and crew down with him. Where I am from, we would call it a death omen. The first sight of such things is often fatal. Normally within a standard day, night cycle"

The Princes remained calm, although I noticed that the younger of the two paled a little. The Captain shifted in his seat.

"Are we in danger?"

"No. Generally, only the first person to see the omen is doomed. But this case is odd. If it was entirely spectral then the sailors should not have been able to communicate with us, or pass letters. They are either trying to spread the curse deliberately or, which is more likely, they simply aren't aware that this is how it works."

The Captain nodded. "So how do you know all of this? You speak like any, reasonably educated young woman, certainly far more educated than your station would suggest. But this is not the kind of knowledge that is taught by the average governess."

I felt myself smirk. "I come from... a long way away." I told them. "You would not believe me anyway but suffice to say that in my lands, such knowledge is still rare but is more common and well known than it is here. To go with the fact that such phenomenon are more common there."

"I see. So what do you suggest we do about this?"

The tutor had had enough. "You can't honestly be listening to this. You are an officer and a gentleman. An educated and intelligent man. You cannot be honestly listening to such..." He took a breath and tried again. "This woman is sick. She belongs in Bedlam and I cannot believe that..."

"Today I saw an impossible thing." The Captain said firmly. "I saw a ship which is impossible. I would surrender my command to my second and go to bedlam myself except that he also saw the ship. As did a significant number of my officers and men. Not only that, but we have received signals from a number of other ships in our group that say that other ships have also seen the phantom."

He sighed and I got the sense of a man who was holding on by his fingernails. The two Princes said nothing and stared at their shoes.

"My men are scared." The Captain went on. They want us to turn for port now and be damned to the orders of the admiralty. My officers and I agree that we are inches from mutiny and that the only way that we can avoid that is if something is done."

The tutor was shaking his head. "Discipline military sailors mutiny sir? Nonsense."

The Captain snapped. "Don't be a damned fool sir." He bellowed. "Discipline is only ever a rabble rouser's shout from anarchy sir."

The Princes exchanged quick glances but continued to stare at their feet. The tutor was aghast at the violence contained in the Captain's words. He had clearly forgotten that he was dealing with a soldier.

"The supreme requirement of a ship is order." The Captain snarled, scrabbling for his control. "The men are just as much a part of the ship as her engines or her sails are and in order for the ship to function then every part must work together in perfect harmony. Otherwise we are fighting ourselves as much as we are the enemy. But Sailors are superstitious. They think that they want the rum and an easy life but what they really want is the order of a well run ship. To do their jobs and to move on. Right now, they are afraid and convinced of their own mortality. They will hesitate, question and resist. They will see the sight of the Dutchman, because that is what we saw I am sure of it, as the promise of damnation and the ultimate condemnation of our actions. And if our actions are wrong then why should they follow us?"

He took a deep breath. "So we must show them that we can protect them." He turned back to me. "So what do we do?"

"Throw the letters overboard." I answered promptly. "Do not touch them though. Use sticks and hooks and shovels to scoop them. Then the area should be scoured with salt water."

The Captain's second was nodding.

"Why Salt?" one of the Princes asked. I did not catch which one.

"Because salt is a purifier." I told him. "It cleans away the corruption.

"Each sailor should carry a piece of raw iron about their person at all times." I added. "and a salt water bath would not be a bad idea either but it is not essential. I would also suggest that you have your ship blessed by a priest of it's home port as soon as possible."

"Stupid superstition." The tutor commented.

"Sometimes superstitions have a grain of truth in them." I told him. "Superstitions have saved lives before and they will do again."

"Can you prove any of this?" The Tutor asked. "How do we know that you are not just some mad woman and what was seen was a trick of some kind. Or a mass hallucination."

"An awfully detailed hallucination." One of the princes commented.

"And one that many shared." The other added.

"I can prove it." I told him. "But you will not see me again afterwards."

"Hah, I knew it." The tutor crowed. "She's a fraud."

"Pass me my weapons please?"

"An interesting sword," The prince told me as he handed them over at the Captain's nod. "I have not seen it's like before."

"Nor will you again." I told him with a smile. As I say, I liked the young prince. I turned to the tutor. "Are you ready for your proof?"

"Certainly." He hissed.

And I vanished from their world. Reappearing in ours a few hundred years ago.

I never saw those princes again. I heard that the elder of the two died of an illness before being able to ascend to his throne and it was the younger of the two that became King. A few jumps after that I found my guide an tutor who helped me harness my skills and I started to fight back against my enemies. But I often wonder what happened to those two princes. And whether or not the Flying Dutchman ever found it's peace.

I have many recurring themes in these stories. Some of you have even been good enough to comment on many of them but one of the ones that I keep returning to is the subject of what it's like to wait before action is due to start.

I've even talked about this repeated theme before as well.

But that moment of stillness that exists before the fight begins, before the monster emerges from it's lair. Before the bandits attack or before the weapons are drawn. I've share this moment with others too. Most commonly Kerrass but also with Sam and Mark as we sat waiting for Jack to show himself, or for the attack against the cultists to commence. It is a moment of purest reflection and the greatest fear where you realise that, very shortly, you might be dead or worse.

I have waited for these things so often that it almost starts to become repetitive. I have been told by more than one person that if the waiting ever stops being scary then I should turn for home. Privately I think I'm already a long way past the point at which I should have hung up my spear and turned for home but we do the things that we do for a reason.

There was a difference this time though. This time I was in brotherhood with a group of men and one woman as we all sat and watched Helfdan write in his journal.

He just sat there. Sat comfortably in the falling snow, resting his back against a tree, his legs stretched out in front of him with his journal open on his knees and a piece of charcoal in his hand. I was absolutely astonished. Not for the first time and by no means was it the last time that Lord Helfdan defied my expectations but there he was. As relaxed as a man that was sitting beside his own hearth with a hot drink next to his elbow, children long to bed and wife sat next to him.

He was even smiling. A slow, slight smile to be sure but it was a smile nonetheless on what was normally a calm and expressionless face.

He wrote slowly, carefully picking the words out on the page, He looked serene. At peace. There was absolutely nothing about his attitude at all that suggested that we were all ready to visit unspeakable violence on those men who meant to do us harm.

We had left the dockside at a fairly brisk pace. The road between the harbour and the temple was well travelled and we moved relatively easily despite the first flurries of snow that were beginning to fall. I will admit that I quite like snow, although I will also admit that I much prefer liking snow from behind a glass window, the stone of a castle wall with a warm fire at hand. But I do like snow. There is a peacefulness to it as it falls gently onto the ground. In settling it seems to deaden the sound around it as thought he entire world is falling asleep and the snow turns into the blanket of soft wool that it looks like.

Kerrass disagrees of course. He is of the opinion that no sane person would be out of doors when the snow is falling and likes to grumble and complain about getting wet. About the cold seeping into joints and promoting sleep and fatigue where none should exist. Ciri seemed to share his views but as we marched along I was looking about myself with interest and wonder.

We were moving along a wooded path that had been carved out by wagons and horses rather than by any kind of conscious road building. On our left the ground sloped upwards towards the mountain that forms the centre of the island whereas on our right, there was a a slope down before you got to a much smaller fishing harbour. But as we got further and further in land the path rose until we reached a ridge and the land started to rise again on our right before the road started to slope down again.

As the road started to slope down a bit more I saw a scout return to Svein to whisper in his ear. I didn't see who it was but the man was small and carried an unstrung bow so it was almost certainly Perrin. The Scout ran ahead again, moving through the snowy undergrowth with a speed that I envied and Svein moved to walk beside Helfdan who was carefully holding his cloak around himself to protect himself from the snow and the cold.

"Here then." Helfdan said looking around himself.

"Yes." Svein responded as though Helfdan had asked a question. "Just ahead the road forks with one road heading down to the temple and the other moving off to the other villages. Rymer will know that we will take this road to get back to the harbour. So he will set an ambush here."

Helfdan was nodding but I got the feeling that he had stopped listening a little while ago.

"He will hide his troops around the ridge and just beyond it so that we can't see him." Svein continued. "He will wait until we are approaching the summit which is when we will be at our most tired before he attacks."

Helfdan shrugged. "Have you found your site yet?"

"Not yet."

Helfdan nodded as Svein strode off.

"Are we in danger?" I asked Helfdan.

"Hmm? Oh, not really. Rymer is an impatient man and will not do well in these circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

Helfdan didn't look at me. "Time is running short."

I couldn't seem to get much more out of him and returned to the conversation between Ciri and Kerrass.

"So you don't think it's the Dutchman?" Ciri was asking. She didn't sound angry but I thought that there might be a tone to her voice that added it a certain edge.

"The Dutchman?" Kerrass asked, tugging his already tight cloak even tighter around himself. "Of all of the stories that you told us... Which one was the Dutchman?" He smiled slightly to take some of the sting out of his words.

"I don't follow." I put in.

"It was a fascinating account that Ciri gave us the other night." Kerrass told us. "But one of the things that was kind of clear to me was that there were many ships that could be described as being "Dutchmen". As well as people that are called "Dutchmen". For instance, the term "Flying Dutchman", did that mean the ship or the Captain that commanded it?"

"It's not a new question," Ciri admitted.

"If I had to guess." Kerrass went on. "I would say that this world that Ciri spoke about has many different ghost ships. But that they all get called "The Flying Dutchman" because no-one knows which ship they are referring to. Many ships were lost at sea yes?" He asked Ciri.

"Oh yes. Storms, pirates and things."

"Well then I would suggest that more than a few, or just that one, were lost to curses or other supernatural means. That the stories of these losses were limited in order to keep the crews sailing without giving into the fear and superstition that Ciri spoke of in the sailors. That this... VOC told everyone that such ghost ships do not exist and because the VOC told them that they didn't exist then everyone believed them."

Ciri sighed. "I thought I might have an answer there."

"I think you do." Kerrass told her. "Just not the answer. We know which world the ship comes from. We can confirm that it comes from another world and that it is what their world would refer to as a "Dutchman". But is it the Dutchman, let alone the Flying one. I am less certain. In the story you told, the apparition glowed with a red light. We do not know, so we are forced to assume that that red light and the heat effects is that world's equivalent of the green ghost light. But in that story, the light comes from the ship as well as the sailors. It seemed to you as though the sailors were within the glow, correct?"

"Yes."

"But in our Skeleton Ship's case. We know that the Ship itself is solid and that it behaves according to the laws of the sea that it sails on. Other than the laws of ice. Whereas the ghost ship that you saw was sailing against the wind?"

"And against prevailing currents too."

"So I will admit that I don't think that it's the same ship. I think it was from the same world, even from the same... nation. But I don't think it was the same ship."

"I really thought I was onto something there."

"And you were." Kerrass turned to me. "What's happening?"

"Svein and Helfdan think that we are going to be ambushed."

"Probably a pretty safe bet. What do they plan on doing?"

"Damned if I know."

"The road forks just up here." Ciri told us.

We swung round and trotted a bit further along the path. At some point there had been some kind of subsidence in the road and the road had slipped. This must have happened years ago but it meant that there was a large embankment on one side. You could climb it, little more than six or seven feet tall but it didn't look particularly stable and you would have to jump to reach the tree who's roots were running along the edge of the grass.

This, plus the fact that the snow was really beginning to settle now. Svein stopped and moved to the side of the road where he stood and looked at it for a while. Then he nodded to himself and rejoined the column of men.

"I have a place," he told Helfdan who merely nodded at the news.

We reached the temple of Freya. As it turned out, it was a cave. I don't know what I was expecting really, but whatever it was that I was expecting, that wasn't it. Some kind of massive hall I suppose but in the end it was a cave. The Priestesses were welcoming enough. They greeted Ciri like a long lost Grand-daughter, treated Kerrass with a kind of affectionate contempt and Helfdan with a strange, measured kind of respect. It was as though the way they thought of him was that he was clever. That he did well for himself despite his obvious short comings.

Those shortcomings seemed to be the fact that he was a man rather than anything else. He took it with good grace and asked for something warm for his men to eat and drink.

I was greeted accordingly and the rest of the men, including Svein who recognised one of the Priestesses who might have been an Aunt or cousin or something, were largely ignored unless they had something specific to say. Svein busied himself by setting sentries out. But this was different to how I have normally seen him set sentries. As I think I've said, normally he would say that the art of setting sentries is that a sentry should see without being seen. But this time, the men stood in the open. Still in places where they could easily be seen.

"Are we not in danger of being attacked?" I asked Svein. "If they see that we are here...?"

"Nah," he told me. "Rymer would not dare risk the wrath of the Priestesses even though more than one Priestess would cheerfully see us all dead. Also, from a military perspective, we would just retreat into the cave. No, if he wants to kill us, which he probably does, then he will want to make sure that no-one survives which means an ambush in the open."

"So how do we defeat him?"

"We ambush him instead." He grinned at me, a man happy in his work.

"But, if he's waiting out there and we're over here then..."

"Are you not the one who says that you should always leave things to the Professionals?" Svein asked me. "Let me worry about that. Believe me when I say that he will come to us and walk into our trap. I'm much better at this than Rymer is."

He whistled as he walked off.

All told, we got to the Temple at about mid afternoon. I wasn't allowed into the temple and I shouldn't really have been surprised by that. They let Ciri in though and I was grateful that I had thought that she should come along. For that reason if for no other reason than that. The rest of us set up a camp all around the cave that the temple was kept in.

We really dug in as well. Not in providing defences, we dug no trenches but I was astonished to learn that we absolutely intended to stay the night.

"But it's getting colder." I protested to Ivar as I helped to put up one of the tents that the Priestesses had provided for us.

"It is at that," the old man complained genially. "It's going to get colder too. I can feel it in my bones. Nothing makes my bones ache quite as much as when there's cold weather coming." He considered this for a moment, "maybe rain. But cold really makes them ache."

"Yes, but, we're waiting here rather than heading back to town." I protested.

"That's right."

"Why?"

"Dunno." The older man scratched under his arm-pit. "Safer for a start I suspect. No-one's going to attack us here otherwise the Priestesses will 'ave em. All of this tactical nonsense is a bit above my head anyway. You'd be better off talking to Svein."

But Svein was busy. Stomping about and shouting at people. Giving instructions to people that didn't need to be told what to do. It seemed odd to my eyes. He never did this normally. He gave people their instructions and then trusted them to get on with it. This level of micromanagement seemed... off.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Hmm?" He looked startled, as though I had pulled him out of his thinking. "Oh. Uhhh. I dunno. Make yourself useful. Look bored. Do some training or something."

"But why?"

He gazed at me levelly. "Would I tell you how to write a book?" He asked me before turning to stomp off.

Kerrass had heard the comment about training though and took advantage of that so that the two of us could go through our paces. The cold and forced inactivity of the sea voyage had left my limbs feeling stiff and uncomfortable and I was grateful for the warmth of the activity. Kerrass too, it looked like.

We camped there for the night in the tents. Although the Priestesses wouldn't allow us within the temple sanctuary itself, they brought us food and drink out. They sat and chatted with us, made us laugh and told us some more stories. They were reluctant to talk of anything too political and certainly disapproved of too many questions. But they told funny stories of the doings and business of local villages and their folk.

I remember sleeping fairly well that night although I hadn't thought that I would manage that. I had thought that the treat of danger and the pressure of time would keep me awake.

One of the Priestesses told me that it was the peace of the Goddess that I felt. I told her that I couldn't answer to that.

Once again I was astonished as we utterly failed to get up and start moving in the morning. The activity and urgency that I had expected was utterly lacking in the movements of the people around me and in the end I will admit to losing my temper a little bit. Hunting out Svein who I found sat with Helfdan who was examining a map of the Skelligan isles.

"Ok." I told them. "I'll bite. I thought we were running out of time."

"We are." Svein told me. "So?"

"So why are we waiting here?"

He grinned at me. "Not very good at waiting are you." He glanced up as Helfdan rose to his feet and took the map over to the entrance of the cave where Kerrass was doing some sword training. I saw the Skelligan wait calmly until Kerrass had finished before he showed Kerrass the map and the two men talked.

"Actually," I began. "I am very good at waiting. I have done it many many times. But I do not enjoy it. Nor do I enjoy it when I do not know what I am waiting for or what the purpose of the entire situation is."

Svein laughed and clapped me in the shoulder.

"You are right. We are running out of time. But we are not alone in that. Rymer is also running out of time. He's what we would call a Fair weather Raider. He will only attack a place if he knows it's going to be an easy fought battle. He out-numbers us and he knows it. But he also knows that the Skeleton Ship is coming right?"

"Yes, so?"

"So he's the kind of man that wants to get all his chores done and out of the way so that he can be curled up in his own bed with a nice warm woman before winter starts, do you follow?"

"ummm..."

"So he's under orders to destroy us. He knows that we're good, so he has set an ambush. If he chooses the site of the fight then he has the advantage so we must remove that advantage from him and draw him out of his site. He knows where we are. His men are watching us even now. No, don't turn around. Now gently shift your weight and look out of the corner of your right eye."

I did as I was told.

"You see that rabbit?"

I did. It was a small brown thing on the edge of the trees just below a small ridge.

"There is no way a rabbit should be out and about in this weather. It should be below ground where it's warm. That means that Rymer has a scout watching us."

"How many?"

"Just one. Perrin's watching him now. So Rymer knows where we are. He knows the route we have to take to get back to the Wave-Serpent. So right now, he's out there, waiting. Freezing his nuts off. His men are with him. Also wondering why he doesn't just attack us. I mean, obviously we know that Rymer wouldn't risk attacking us when we're with the Priestesses but the mercenaries and the soldiers don't know that. They're cold, bored and thinking of their own women and homes.

"So put yourself in his boots. He's been out there, camping in the cold in case we come back in the dark. He gets a report that we're still at the temple. Why? He doesn't know. What could we possibly be doing there. Do we know something he doesn't? what is going on? All the time, the skeleton ship is getting closer and closer and the weather is getting worse and worse and if he stays here much longer then he runs the risk of having to sail through icy water, stormy seas or worse, begging hospitality off clan Heymaey. After having to explain to that clan as to his intention of assaulting another Skelligan on the sacred isle. So what would you do in his position?"

"I would send a scout. To check what's going on."

"So would I. Scouts in these situations work in pairs. There's one watching us. The other has reported back last night. The watcher will be relieved at some point this morning so that the one who stayed over night can go back, report and get some rest. That's what we're waiting for."

"What happens then?"

"Wait and see." He grinned. He reminded me of a street corner sleight of hand artist asking me if I had any change I could spare for a magic trick. Promising me faithfully that the money would be returned to me.

So we waited.

Kerrass and I trained a little bit more which was when I learned that the Priestesses didn't know anything else of any kind of use. They told us that there was nothing in any of the local Elven ruins that pertained to the Skeleton Ship. They also told us that they supported our efforts to dismiss, destroy or otherwise exorcise the poor souls that were trapped aboard the ship and they also told us some other places where we could look. It turned out that their maps of Skellige, especially when it came to things like the locations of Elven ruins were much more comprehensive than anything else we could have found. They also told us how we could make contact with the Ice giants and the rumoured location of the last bastion of the Vodyanoi amongst the islands.

I struggled not to feel too disappointed but Kerrass took it in his stride.

"This is how it goes sometimes Freddie, you know that." He told me as he led me over to an open area which we were using for training.

"I do, in all fairness I do, but dammit, couldn't it be a bit easier sometimes? You know, for varieties sake?"

He chuckled at me.

We trained, which was when I learned that Ciri was waiting inside the temple as part of the ruse to let Rymer and his crew know that we weren't moving.

Then it all happened.

A piercing whistle came out over the small hollow and the men of the Wave-Serpent leapt into action. Kerrass and I went with them. The tents were taken down, our goods packed and everything had been left as close to as if we had never been there. I mean, not quite but it was as close as it could be.

I packed up my things and then we were moving off through the undergrowth. Ivar gave me a pair of shoes that looked like large plates, or the kind of grilles that prospectors use to sift gold out of riverbeds and I was instructed how to strap them to my feet. Snow shoes he called them and they did indeed work in helping me move across the open snow fields as we headed into the trees. We didn't need them for long though. In amongst the trees, the going got steadily easier until we could move quickly and quietly. Our trailblazer, a man who I hadn't met called Kunnr led us to our own proposed ambush site. Svein placed us carefully so that we could not be seen and drilled us on what would happen. Kerrass, Ciri, myself and Helfdan would wait at the back.

"Not that I don't think that any of you can fight." Svein told us. "But because we need to overwhelm them with coordination and we haven't really done that much fighting together so... Plug a gap if you need to but..."

"It won't come up." Helfdan was settling down and making himself comfortable. "The fight won't last long."

Ciri shrugged, rolled herself up in her blanket and, much to my astonishment, went to sleep. Kerrass grinned at my reaction and sat to meditate, leaving me to watch Helfdan work at his journal.

So we waited. Doing all the things that you do when you have to wait in the peace and quiet. Kerrass meditated, Ciri slept and I fretted.

The men seemed as though they were mostly used to this. They maintained their weapons and put their armour on. I was struck with a similarity between them and Sir Rickard's bastards in the way that they all waited. They seemed to play the same games and tell similar stories.

I went to find Svein.

"So what's happening now?"

He took a deep breath. He was sat, near his master and in a similar pose although where Helfdan was sat with his legs stretched out and comfortable, Svein was like a coiled spring. Like a Cat ready to pounce. He leant his head back against the tree and closed his eyes.

"Right now, Rymer is wondering what we could possibly still be doing at the shrine. It will not have occurred to him that we might still be there or that we could still be going through any of the ceremonies and things that the Priestesses sometimes demand. Instead he will fret. What has he forgotten? What could we be doing? All the questions will be running through his head. All the questions that he has already asked himself a thousand times before and will ask himself a thousand times again before all is said and done.

"But his men are getting fractious now and the small voice in the back of his head will be wondering if something has gone wrong. What if we've found his scout, what if we've gone a different direction. What if we've skirted round him and are recovering the Wave-Serpent a different way. What if we are even being picked up by another ship and are leaving the Wave-Serpent here."

His eyes opened slightly as he looked at me. "Not that we ever would of course but that will be occurring to him. He does not love his ship the way we love ours."

He closed his eyes again.

"After a while he will start to doubt the initial report of the first scout. He will summon the poor man from his bed roll and start haranguing the man for answers. What were we doing? What was the Swallow doing? How did we behave and above all, he will ask why we haven't left yet?

"The scout can't answer of course. So Rymer will lose his temper and send another scout."

He fell into silence.

"So?" I prompted.

Svein held up a finger.

I could hear hoof beats coming down the road and heading off in the direction of the temple.

Helfdan was still writing, carefully scratching out the words on to the paper. I looked over at Kerrass and realised that he was also watching Helfdan.

Ciri snored quietly.

"What can have happened?" Svein muttered quietly. "Where the fuck have they all gone? Where has the man gone that I was supposed to meet? The scout will have a quick look around, he might even ask the Priestesses who will simply tell the scout that we have left and that they don't know where we've gone. Now the scout has a problem. Will he return to face Rymer's wrath and confusion. Or does he properly look for us. Rymer is not a patient man though and likes to know what's going on so..."

The hoof beats approached again, this time going the other way.

"Now Rymer will be angry. He will demand answers from the second scout before his anger and fear will overwhelm him. Then, rather than waiting he will lose his temper and come to see for himself."

"When?"

"Watch Helfdan."

I did as I was told.

Here's the thing that was freaking me out about it. I write a lot. I make my living by writing. Yes, I could just sit back on my heels and let Emma pay my way with all of the proceeds from the trading company but a small and perverse part of me wants to make my own way in the world. So I spend a lot of time, sitting at desks or at tables in corners of taverns, setting my thoughts down on paper.

But here's the thing. In order to do any of that, I need a certain amount of distance from the subject. As I write these words I am several days away from the time that the events occurred, writing from brief notes that I made in shorthand during some forced inactivity.

But another thing is that I need peace and quiet. Not just in my surroundings but also a certain peace and quiet of mind. I need to be calm and collected in order to do the work and even then, I find that procrastination is my biggest problem. I keep finding other things to do, sharpening my quill, stirring my ink, checking a source or something so that when I actually get down to the writing, hours can have passed between when I actually sat down to start to write and actually setting the first words to paper.

But I certainly couldn't have sat and written anything down while I was waiting for a fight to start. It was as though...

Kerrass has this trick where he can just put everything else aside and focus on the task at hand. He uses this to focus on the monster that he's hunting so that he's not distracted by other things and he can then pick them up later.

It was as though Helfdan was doing that. There was nothing else that he could do to prepare for the coming fight so he just... did something else.

I remember being told that, in certain circumstances, there is no point worrying about certain things so what's the point in wasting time in doing that worrying. And that is true, but it is also an all but impossible directive. That's the way that the brain works, it likes to pick at problems so telling myself not to worry about these things is like telling my brain that it's ok to actually start worrying about it.

But Helfdan had the truest approach to that that I've ever seen. There was no point in worrying about things, so he didn't. The enemy would be along in due course, or they wouldn't, so why worry about it?

So he sat there and wrote in his journal.

As I watched, snow started to fall and he didn't notice until a snowflake landed on his forehead. He brushed it off irritably and pulled his cloak around in order to shield the book from the falling snow.

I shook my head in disbelief.

The rest of the men were getting ready, putting armour on and readying weapons. Svein was moving up and down the line himself, positioning the men carefully and with a precision that I found strangely off putting. It was so detailed. Then he would go down to the road and examine the lines where we were all hiding, scanning our hiding places carefully before moving back to his own position.

At some point, he went to a bag and pulled out a plain shirt of chain mail, some leather wrist guards and a plain looking pot helm which he deposited at Helfdan's feet before standing over him and glaring until, with a slightly chastened smile, Helfdan rose from his seated position and put his armour on.

It struck me again, the difference between Helfdan and most of the men and ship's crews that I had seen in Skellige. If you had lined up the crew of the Wave-Serpent in their full battle dress then you would have chosen Svein out to be the Captain. With his large expensive armour, impressively detailed shield and the crested helmet that he used so that his men could easily find him on the battlefield. Or maybe I would have chosen Ursa to be the Lord, with his similarly impressive armour and the bearskin that he had worked into the outfit.

Or even Kunnr. Who I saw in his full armour for the first time and finally understood why he was called Kunnr The Shining as his armour had been polished to a sheen where the sun's glare in the metal made my eyes hurt.

Haakon had the bigger axe. Ivar was older and of an impressive stature. I probably wouldn't even have noticed Helfdan, stood off to one side somewhere with a slight smile, a loose chain shirt and some plain, unadorned wrist guards.

When he was armoured, Helfdan sat back down again and restarted his writing. Apparently without pause.

"Don't worry." Svein said in my ear making me jump a mile. "I don't know how he does it either."

We sat and waited. Svein had set a watch so that most of us could withdraw from the road and stomp about a bit to keep warm but that didn't make the waiting any the less tedious. We just sat and waited. And I watched Helfdan.

Then Helfdan stopped. Not abruptly, but more in the kind of way that a person would just finish a thought. Then he carefully wrapped the journal up in the oilskin pouch that he kept it in, in order to keep it dry over longer distances and put it away, then he stood, carefully rubbed some warmth back into his limbs before doing some stretching. I swear to the Holy Fire that he turned and looked to where Svein and I were stood, just before Perrin jogged over to Svein and nodded to him.

Svein gave some signals, waving his hands and making some strange shapes as we moved into position and I stood with Svein as people climbed to their feet and went through the same collection of movements that Helfdan had just finished.

"How did he know?" I asked. "Or rather, I suppose I should start asking whether or not he did know."

Svein shrugged. "I couldn't tell you. I don't think even he knows the answer. He has no instinct for ground, no talent for tactics or anything of that nature. But he always seems to know when a fight is about to start. We've been in this position more times than I can count. About to jump out at an enemy or about to have an enemy jump out at us and always, absolutely always, he looks up and sniffs the air, or tilts his head like a dog. He might have seen something, or heard something but I soon learned to trust his instincts on that."

Svein grinned at me. "Don't get me wrong though, I still set scouts and look outs. Just because he's always been right before doesn't mean he'll be right again tomorrow. Keep an eye on him for me would you. For all of his power, grace and poise on the deck of a ship he's as clumsy as fuck on a battlefield. I remain certain that one day, he's going to break his fool neck as he charges a battle line."

We moved into position and watched as Captain Rymer walked into our trap.

The thing you have to remember about ambushes, is that they work.

I'm the brother of a man that fought in a war and I have known a number of other military men during my time on the road with Kerrass and one of the things that I have learned about tactics is that a well prepared and well executed plan works. Things don't work when something goes wrong. When the person who comes up with the plan is not privy to some small but vital piece of information. Or when the target of the plan, in this case an ambush, is aware that it's about to happen. That's when plans start to go wrong.

The most famous example of this is the Battle of Brenna. Everything about that battle suggests that the Nilfgaardian side should have won. Absolutely everything says that that should be the case. Except it wasn't. Because one of the officers didn't properly scout out the flanks of the Imperial army and as such, the army was unprepared for what was found there.

In short, there is a reason that the people of the Northern Kingdoms called that battle "The miracle of Brenna".

People are always keen to look down on people that use ambushes. They say that the tactic is dishonourable. I have noticed this several times however I also notice that when those same people have the opportunity, they think absolutely nothing of committing a similarly dishonourable act, thus making true the old saying about "Nothing more honourable than victory".

But this was a quick ambush on the road. The Wave-Serpent's thirty or so warriors against Captain Rymer's fifty something. We had every advantage. Even though we were outnumbered, we had the high ground. We were able to trap Rymer against the embankment that Svein had spotted earlier. Every one of our troops could fight but many of his were trapped by their fellows meaning that the number advantage was neutralised. Their force was angry and afraid. They had left their own cover and were out in the open. Their force was divided, some men were loyal to Rymer both as a sworn lord and sworn clan member. But the rest of the force were mercenaries.

The tactics were simple. Haakon, tall and terrible with his axe, Sigurd the Fury and Ivar the old, stepped out into the path in front of Rymer's column. They roared a battle-cry and charged towards the enemy. The rear of Rymer's formation heard the challenge and ran up to join in the fight. Svein then led a small shield wall into the back of Rymer's group closing off the road.

So Rymer could not go forward due to the terrifying presence of Haakon, Sigurd and Ivar. But nor could he go backwards. He couldn't go to his left because of the embankment so his only option to break out and outflank either of our formations was to go into the trees on his right.

Which is where the rest of us were waiting.

Kunnr the shining stood up and roared. I still had not met him at this point. He seemed a quiet man most of the time and although companionable and neighbourly he didn't enjoy putting himself forward.

I later learned that he came from an unhappy home and a tragic past. His parents were angry and bitter people, resentful of perceived injustices that they had obviously had nothing to do with. The truth being that their anger and bitterness had driven all friends and potential allies away. They liked to tell people that they were an ancient family of noble heritage but that they were not paid the respect that they had been owed.

Kunnr had a sister that had married into Helfdan's crew by snaring Ursa when he wasn't paying attention, and when a space had opened up on the Wave-Serpent for a fighter, she had sent a message to her brother in an effort to get him away from the poisonous home life that he had been enduring.

Upon his receipt of the message, Kunnr's father had attacked him, calling him traitor and bastard. He had questioned Kunnr's legitimacy and hurled insult and injury at his son until Kunnr had been forced to defend himself and the old man fell dead. Everyone knew what had happened and Kunnr's lord was merciful but the crime of patricide was a dire one, even in defence and Kunnr could no longer stay.

Kunnr had taken his only remaining family heirloom which was the shining armour that gave him his name and journeyed to Helfdan's lands where he had been astonished to find acceptance and kindness. He was a fierce fighter and had that gift that good men have that when he charges into enemy ranks, others tend to follow him and he was rapidly becoming Svein's second in command when it came to land based skirmishing.

Kunnr raised his two axes high in the air and screamed a battle cry before charging down the hill. Such was the power of the moment that Kerrass, Ciri and I followed. Helfdan was with us as well and I just had time to see Perrin and a couple of others appear above the embankment and start shooting arrows down into Rymer's mass of men.

Just in time, before Helfdan tripped over a tree root. It would have been funny if the situation hadn't been so desperate. I stopped to help him, afraid that a thrown dart, an axe or maybe an arrow had hit him. But no, he had just managed to find one of the only pieces of root sticking out of the snow.

He waved me on but Svein had been insistent and I stayed with him as he climbed to his feet, brushing the snow off him as he went.

The Skelligan mercenaries that fought for Rymer charged us. Thus proving that Skelligan mercenaries are a different breed to their more mainland cousins. What mercenaries I have seen and met on the continent fall into two different categories, the first is the highly trained, well equipped, highly professional organisations that live and die by their word and are always, always dependable. The other kind is those groups of men who call themselves mercenaries because to call themselves bandits would be a little bit too much on the nose.

These men though, were different. They lacked any kind of coordination. It was more like a group of individuals rather than any kind of unit. This can be said about all kinds of Skelligan fighters but, as an example, most of them fought together under loose kinds of organisation in order to watch each other's backs and being able to support each other.

But these men were desperate. They had something to prove. I asked about it later and apparently it was something to do with the desire to belong to a clan. If a man is a mercenary then they must be clan-less. If they are clan-less and outcast then they must be like that for a reason so they are looking for something in order to prove themselves in order to wash their disgrace away. In this case, if they could take down some of the more famous members of Helfdan's crew, then they could make a name for themselves and be able to command a place for themselves in any ships crew that they could name.

Let alone if they managed to be the person that caught and killed Helfdan himself.

I saw a number of men run to meet Kunnr's charge, his shining armour serving to distract people. A man wearing such armour has to be important after all so killing him must be able to provide fortune and wealth.

Another thing I learned later was that a side-effect of those opportunities where Kunnr had time to put his armour on, people would often mistake him for Helfdan on the grounds that someone who dressed so ostentatiously must be the Lord of the people that they were fighting.

No-one dared to attack the murderous assault of Sigurd, Haakon and Ursa, a large group attempted to break out the back of things and attacked Svein's group at the rear.

A few saw Helfdan stumble and, presumably knowing more about how Helfdan and his people worked, they attacked us. But like me, it would seem that Kerrass and Ciri had been given instructions.

Neither Helfdan or myself had to swing a blow. We were never in any danger. Helfdan even took the time to hang his axe back into the loop on his side and put his sword away. Four men moved to attack Helfdan. They could have brought more and I have no idea why they didn't.

Ciri leapt forward with a rising diagonal cut that slashed at the first man's femoral artery. He had time to realise that he was dying before his legs collapsed under him but Ciri was already past him and engaging her next opponent.

Kerrass had moved alongside her. A man with a shield attacked him trying to drive him back, Kerrass struck at the shield twice with hard slashes. The first blow pushed the shied across his opponents body, the second caught the opposite edge pushing it the other way exposing the man's chest to Kerrass' follow up lunge.

Ciri was playing with a man who was wielding a two handed axe. He had his shield on his back and used his axe with some skill, spinning it in short, murderous patterns that would have made mincemeat of Ciri if he ever got anywhere near her. Instead she just moved aside at the last possible moment. Her movements were small, barely moving at all with her sword hanging by her side almost negligently. Her face was a sneer which turned her beautiful face rather ugly if you ask me. Eventually though the man lost his temper and the swings started to come in more wildly and Ciri simply side-stepped his huge over-handed blow with a half turn and fairly decapitated him.

Kerrass was facing another opponent with a shield but by the time Ciri had finished her opponent it was almost over. I had time to see him push his shoulder into the man's shield which sent him stumbling backwards. Kerrass kicked his sword arm aside and just held the point of his sword at the man's throat. I couldn't see as I could only see Kerrass from the back, but it is easy for me to imagine the slight frown that he would have been wearing as well as the raised eyebrow.

The fallen man let go of his sword and lay there limply. Kerrass reached down and took the long fighting knife from the man's belt before helping him to his feet.

And with that, the fighting seemed to mostly come to a halt. The remainder of Rymer's men had closed up into a circle of shields with their backs to the embankment with those men who couldn't stand in the front raising their shields to cover their fellows from the arrows coming down from above. Helfdan's men were probing it gently but it was clear that things had come crashing down. I saw a couple of injured men on our side but no dead, we had a number of prisoners with maybe a dozen corpses and half as many again injured.

Svein called an order and The Wave-Serpent's fighters pulled back.

"Are you there Helfdan?" Rymer called out after a long moment.

Helfdan took a deep breath and stepped forward. I noticed that Ursa stood next to him with his large shield half raised. Svein was nearby, growling orders to a group of men that looked as though they were getting ready to do something suitably aggressive.

"I'm here Rymer. What do you want?"

"Why did you attack us? We were just on our way to the temple, same as you were."

"Try again Rymer. You told me that were sailing. You were lying then, or you are lying now. Which is it? Or is it possible that you were lying both times."

"Not an unfair comment." Rymer agreed, sounding fairly amicable. "But we all have our orders. You could always tell me how you knew we were coming?"

I saw Ursa smirk but Helfdan didn't react.

"You really must learn to be more patient Rymer." He said after a while

"Yes, I suppose I must at that. But the ship is coming you know?"

Helfdan didn't answer that.

There was a long pause and I realised that the snow was beginning to fall again.

"What do you want Rymer?"

"Want?" There was a pause. "How about we settle this honourably."

"You mean a situation where you don't ambush me and I don't ambush you?"

"That's right. We'll try and kill each other like civilised people."

Helfdan actually laughed at that. "I have you surrounded Rymer. I have archers above you and you know that you cannot hold. I have the backing of the Queen and am aiding other's with a Quest of Blood making my cause as honourable as they come. What could you possibly offer me?"

"All of what you say is true. But you and I both know that you will lose people, maybe even a lot of people. Would you be Ok with that?"

Helfdan looked over at Svein, who shrugged and nodded.

Helfdan thought about this for a moment.

"What are we talking about here?" He called out.

"Well, not being funny but I doubt that Manbreaker is going to let you fight me is he?"

Svein laughed at that.

"Thought not." Rymer called. "Well my man here is just itching for a crack at that bear of yours. How about it then?"

"A fight of champions?" Helfdan mused.

"Correct. I name Osvald the Quick as my champion."

Helfdan looked over to where Ursa had sat down. He was filling a pipe with tobacco until Sigurd nudged him with his foot. Ursa looked up to see Helfdan looking at him and shrugged.

"Then I name Ursa the Bear as my champion."

"Excellent."

And just like that, Rymer's group of men split apart, weapons were put away and people seemed to sit and relax. Men from both crews called out to friends on the other side, tobacco was shared, drinks were swapped and people seemed to settle in for the coming spectacle. Rymer emerged with the man from the docks who had looked at Ursa so hungrily.

Rymer and Helfdan shook hands and I was, again, struck with the difference between the two.

"Well fought Helfdan."

"Not me," Helfdan told him. "It was Svein's plan."

"It would be," Rymer grinned.

"What's this all about Rymer? We've tussled in the past but this seems a bit extreme."

"Oh, you know how it is." Rymer dodged.

"Not really no."

Osvald was warming up. He was stretching and moving around, spinning his axe in his hands to the cheering of the men of Rymer's crew and appreciative whistles from the men of the Wave-Serpent. Ursa sat watching him, having lit his pipe.

Svein ordered Perrin to run back to the temple to get some help for the wounded and I bent to help those that I could. There were a couple that were beyond my skill and beyond the help of anyone that would come. A few more that would need more skilled help and I helped patch up one or two more before Helfdan called me back. While I had been working a square had been marked out in the road. It looked to have been measured out by spear lengths, but that could mean anything. A couple of men were going over the ground, doing their best to clear loose stones and snow in order to give the combatants stable ground to work with.

Helfdan was stood with Rymer and another man from Rymer's crew. Kerrass and Ciri were nearby.

"We are discussing the terms of the combat Lord Frederick." Helfdan told me. "I was hoping that you would act as a neutral witness."

"He is hardly neutral." Rymer complained although I don't think he meant it, not really. "After all, it's his quest that's causing all the ruckus.

Helfdan sighed. "If you wish, I could ask his feudal Lord?"

"Oh?"

"Imperial Majesty?" Helfdan shuddered as he called the title. It was almost imperceptible but I was standing next to him as he called.

Ciri stood and once again proved just how quickly she can go from one guise to the other. Despite the blood, snow, sweat and grime that she was covered in, her hair in disarray and shaking a little with combat reaction. She was the Empress again, even just for a moment.

"Well fuck me." Rymer paled. "I didn't know that she was... Fuck me sideways."

Helfdan's eyebrow rose. "Are you sure you don't want to just back out?"

"I really do." Rymer admitted. "But you know, honour's the thing isn't it."

"Isn't it always." Helfdan agreed. "So then... Is Lord Frederick an acceptable witness?"

Rymer swallowed before looking me in the eye. I could see him forcing himself to be cheerful and to keep his tone light.

"I suppose he'll have to do." His grin was weak. "Rather that than... involve..."

"I quite understand." Helfdan said. Letting the other man off the hook.

"What do I have to do?" There was an aura of formality about the entire thing and it seemed as though things could go badly if I got any of the etiquette wrong.

"It's a lot like being the second in a duel on the continent." Ciri told me having approached to see what the fuss was. She was back to being the young woman again, travelling companion and fighter. "Except that you're the second to both parties."

"So I agree rules and terms and things?"

"Yes."

I shrugged. "Gentlemen then." I addressed the two waiting Lords. "On the continent it would be the duty of a second to ask if there is any way that violence can be avoided?"

"Duty binds me." Rymer was unhappy but he spoke formally.

Helfdan just shook his head. I noticed that he was looking me in the eye which I found off-putting. He really does have this piercing blue gaze that seems to look straight through you. It's really quite distracting.

"So the next thing that I have to do is to check with you what the terms of the duel are?"

"To the death." Rymer's champion Osvald hissed, he was pacing back and forward while glaring his hatred into Ursa. At the time, I meant to try and find out what it was that Ursa had done to earn Osvald's hatred to such an extent, but I never quite managed to get that information out of him. When I thought to wonder, Kerrass suggested that it was simply a matter of wanting to see who was best, that men who make their living out of being the best one on one fighter in the land, always live in the shadow of someone and there is always the need to prove themselves over that person. I was never quite happy with this though. Osvald's feelings seemed to have a certain amount of teeth that I had not felt elsewhere.

Neither Rymer nor Helfdan seemed surprised by the demand and I looked over at Ursa who was lying on his shield picking at his teeth. He saw me looking and shrugged.

"Then what are the rules." I checked with the two lords. "If I am to make sure that things are done correctly then I should know what that looks like."

"The two fighters must stay inside the square." Helfdan told me. "As the duel is to the death then any surrender must be met with a swift death. Prolonging things, toying with your opponent is considered dishonourable."

"I see," It says something about a culture that has to put rules into place about that kind of thing. "So, what happens if you both win."

"What?" Rymer perked up.

"Well, this was to avoid a battle and more death right? What happens if Ursa wins? What happens if Osvald wins?"

"If Osvald wins, then you must call off this quest of yours." Rymer said promptly, hope showing in his eyes suddenly. "You must return to your halls and stay there until the Skeleton Ship has passed, taking your guests with you." He seemed to consider the thought. "Yes, I think that that should cover it. Oh, and you owe me a debt of honour. We can work out what it would be later."

Helfdan looked unsurprised. "Acceptable." He agreed readily to Rymer's obvious astonishment.

Rymer wasn't the only one who was astonished. I certainly was. So was Svein. Kerrass and Ciri too. Ursa didn't seem to blink, simply lumbering to his feet.

"And if Ursa wins?" I prompted after a moment where everyone just looked at each other and blinked rather stupidly.

"Oh," Helfdan seemed startled. "Ummm. Well, I would have asked a few questions about who was trying to have me killed before..." His forehead creased in thought. "I think that you and all of your men would need to consider yourselves my prisoners. It would have gone that way if we had won anyway so..."

Rymer paled a little. "But..." His voice petered out as Helfdan just gazed at him evenly.

I don't know... I am trained in continental matters of etiquette and politics and political manoeuvring. But there is more than a small possibility that what had just happened was that because Helfdan had not complained or tried to bargain against the terms of the duel, then it would make Rymer appear cowardly if he complained about anything. It also showed Helfdan's utter confidence in his champion as well as some other subtleties that I suspect I am too continental to entirely understand.

Just in case there was any doubt in anyone's mind. Anyone that tries to claim that Skelligans are uneducated, uncultured barbarians is just plain wrong. Stop trying to hold different people and different cultures to your standard and perhaps we will all get along that little bit better.

But anyway...

"Very well." Rymer finally agreed.

Rymer's man Osvald was doing some sword movements. The kind of thing that Kerrass and Ciri do, in an effort to loosen up his muscles in the morning. The difference being that Osvald was clearly doing them too quickly for that purpose and his gaze never left Ursa's face. Ursa was watching him with an expression somewhere between amusement and the kind of expression you see when an acrobat is watching another acrobat doing a routine. There is an appreciation for a shared art there but also a sense of waiting for the other man to get out of the way so that he could get on with things.

"Is there anything else?" I asked. Perrin had returned with a couple of Priestesses from the temple who had bent to work over the wounded. I noticed that one of the men was given something to drink to ease his journey into the next world and a couple of men were putting together a stretcher in order to get some of the worse wounded back to the temple.

"No," Helfdan grunted, moving out of the square.

"No, time to get this over with." Rymer agreed and moved to the other side of the square.

Osvald moved into the middle. Ursa rolled his shoulders and stepped in opposite him.

"Are you ready?" I asked the two men.

Osvald swung his sword through the air from left to right. He did it hard, making the air whistle. The effort to intimidate his opponent was so blatant that it was almost amusing. Then he nodded at me.

Ursa seemed more concerned about the placement of his feet, properly making sure that he was settled and firm on them. Then he rested his large war hammer over his shoulder and lifted his shield into place before also turning to nod at me.

Event to me, a scholar and occasional fighter. The result was a foregone conclusion. I knew who was going to win and I suspect that I was not the only one given the way that Rymer turned away and shook his head a little.

I never found out why Osvald was so determined to fight Ursa though.

"Then begin." I said formally and got out of the way.

Osvald leapt forward, sword flashing in a murderous arc. Just before it was due to strike out at Ursa, it change direction in an effort to come under Ursa's shield, aiming for a blow at Ursa's leg, similar to the blow that Ciri had used earlier.

Ursa barely moved, just shifting his shield a little to accommodate the change of direction of the attack.

Osvald launched into a flurry of blows, striking this way, that way, from every direction possible as well as a few directions that weren't possible. And still Ursa just didn't move. He was like a rock, standing before the onslaught of the ocean.

Osvald was fast, I will give him that. Certainly faster than me. He was a fine warrior but over time, I could visibly see him beginning to run out of ideas. Ursa had barely moved during the entire fight, just small adjustments of his shield to deflect the other man's attacks in one direction or another. Sometimes using the rim of his shield to keep things off centre. Other than that, he didn't move.

Then I saw the moment that it began to register in Osvald's face. He paled slightly, I don't think he did much more than that. Maybe his eyes got a little wilder and a little wider. His blows started to become a little wilder, a little less precise and for the first time during the entire fight. Ursa moved.

It was like watching a big man stretch. After he's finished his drink of an evening and stands up to stretch before going on his way. His hammer came off his shoulder and swung a huge over arm blow at Osvald. It was not a fast blow. Nor was it particularly strong, but the huge metal head of his hammer made Ursa's blow strong. Terrifyingly so.

Osvald took the blow on his shield. I don't know but I suspect that this was a mistake. The shield wobbled and Osvald staggered backwards. He was off his own rhythm now and his shield was not where it was supposed to be. Not where he wanted it to be. He had time to look up and realise that another hammer blow was heading for him.

And I saw Osvald's despair.

He lifted his shield into the way. This time there was the sound of splintering wood as the hammer broke through the face of the shield leaving a visible dent. Osvald took another step backwards, swinging his sword in an effort to drive Ursa back.

But Ursa took the blow's on his shield while his hammer rose and fell again.

Another blow into the shield. This time the crack was more audible.

Osvald realised that he was about to fall out of the square. He shifted to one side and tried to attack Ursa again, hurling himself, the remnants of his shield and his sword into Ursa.

And quite literally bounced off him. Ursa swung his weapon across his body, forcing Osvald back again. The exchange had left him room to move back into the circle. But Ursa was coming after him. Ursa was slow, plodding along. The blows were inexorable, unstoppable. Like the boulders on the mountain side as the avalanche begins to fall.

Or the icebergs drifting on the sea.

The hammer rose and fell.

The next strike shattered the remaining wood, leaving Osvald holding a set of leather straps and little else, he was whimpering in fear now as he fell back.

I would have asked for mercy. But I am from the continent. The duel was to the death and so it would end in someone's death. If there had been any doubt in my mind as to what was going to happen, it fled then.

Osvald tried though, he drew a fighting knife from his belt and struck furiously at Ursa but there was no way he could get past that shield.

Ursa's face was unreadable. A mask would have had more expression.

The hammer fell.

Osvald parried with his sword but the blow numbed his arm. He was less lucky with the next strike. He was so far out of balance after staggering around under the impacts of the hammer that he could only lift his blade in a block.

The blade, which was already a little bent, broke. It had done very little to impede the progress of the hammer which crashed down onto Osvald's head.

The crash of the hammer striking the metal of the helm was, in no way, musical. Blood exploded from Osvald's mouth as the impact made him bite through his tongue, but if he wasn't dead already then he might as well have been. I saw the dint in that helmet and there was no way that a skull could be entirely solid after that.

The hammer rose.

I wanted to look away but I was a witness to this, a formal witness and I watched as the metal hammerhead fell, burying itself into the bone and brains of Rymer's champion.

It was only afterwards that I realised that every single hammer strike of Ursa's had been been precisely aimed at Osvald's head. That the entire thing had been a foregone conclusion from the moment that Rymer had asked for the duel of Champions.

I wonder if Rymer had known that at the time. Helfdan had. As had Ursa I think.

Ursa had to put his foot on the body of his opponent to pry his hammer free from the clutching remains of Osvald's body.

His face changed expression. For a moment he looked sad. Sad and old.

"I'm sorry boy." He told him. "You did well."

I never found out what had happened between them. It seemed wrong to ask and therefore intrude in some way.

And that was that.

Rymer approached Helfdan with a rueful grin.

"He had been so sure that he could beat your man." He told his captor calmly and with just a trace of sheepish apology."

"It happens." Helfdan told him without emotion.

"So what happens now?" Rymer wanted to know, not unreasonably. "A year and a day of service? That I escort you on your mission? What?"

Helfdan looked at his new collection of prisoners before gradually, his gaze grew distant.

Rymer watched him for a while before his gaze flicked to me and then to Svein in confusion at Helfdan's utter lack of movement.

Then Helfdan moved.

"No." He said. "No I don't think so. A couple of questions first though. Did you hire the mercenaries or were they given to you as part of your mission."

"They were given to me." Rymer told him promptly. "Believe me when I say that I would nev..."

Helfdan waved him off.

"And you were told to kill me."

"Yes, and all those who travelled with you."

Helfdan winced at that but held his hand up before Rymer could say any more. Some of the remaining mercenaries were protesting at this. They wanted to fight, to kill and fulfill their "holy mission" whatever that was. I saw Svein begin to lose patience but Rymer spun on the remains of his men.

"SILENCE," he roared. The change was sudden and unexpected. "We lost. We will act with the honour that we are offered. You will be silent."

Helfdan hadn't moved or reacted as though the recent events were beneath his notice. Or as though those same events were against his idea of how the world worked and therefore they couldn't possibly have happened. Either way, he ignored the outburst from Rymer's men. He just waited for the shifting and the discontent to die down.

To be fair to them. Some of Rymer's men looked equally appalled at the outbursts from their fellows.

"Very well." Helfdan said abruptly. "Lord Frederick. You will witness my orders?"

I stepped forward as Helfdan turned back to Rymer and spoke with a formal voice.

"It is my judgement, Lord Rymer, that you and your men have acted with honour in the pursuit of your duty. That you acted with further honour in an effort to save lives. I find that I cannot condemn you for that. Therefore I will give you two directives."

Rymer nodded. I thought that Svein was unhappy with something but he worked hard to keep his face impassive. I also saw that Ciri was watching closely.

"The first is that those men with you that are not sworn to you personally will be stripped of their arms and armour. They and their goods will be delivered by you, directly, to Queen Cerys at Kaer Trolde for her justice and decision."

A group of the remaining mercenaries heard this and went for their weapons. But I think that Svein, as well as Svein's opposite number in Rymer's crew had been expecting this a little bit and the entire thing was over and done with ruthless efficiency.

Rymer and Helfdan simply waited until the commotion died down.

"Agreed." Rymer affirmed when the silence had fallen. "And your second directive?"

"That you should tell the Queen your orders and who it was that ordered you to do so. You will then answer to the Queen's justice and whim."

Rymer winced a little but he was already resigned. "Very well."

Helfdan nodded. "That's it."

Rymer's mouth twitched towards a smile. "Do you not wish to know who ordered your death?"

Helfdan's face mirrored Rymer's. "Would it matter?"

Rymer shrugged. "Right lads. Let's get this lot moving."

He nodded to Helfdan and then to Ciri before he marched off with his remaining men and his prisoners.

I caught Ciri looking at Helfdan appraisingly.

Helfdan walked a little way away, up the rise to where he had tripped over in the snow while Rymer got his men out and moving. He stood there for a while looking out over where the snow was falling, clutching the hilt of his sword, gripping it hard until his knuckles turned white.

The final cost was that our side had killed nine men and wounded another five. We had lost four men to wounds. Only one of those was particularly serious and although I agreed with the Priestess that he would live, it would be touch and go as to whether or not he would fight again despite his oaths to the contrary. The other three men were hurt and Svein had to order them to remain with the Priestesses for healing. The Priestesses, correctly, said that the cold of the sea as well as extra exertion in this climate could make injuries much worse than was initially suggested and therefore the four men would be spending the remaining time of the Skeleton Ship being healed in the temple or in one of the nearby villages. The Priestess stood surety for the men's safety and Helfdan promised a sizeable donation to the upkeep of the temple.

It would seem that some things are the same, no matter which religion you followed.

Helfdan spent some time with each of the four men. He said nothing, just gripped their uninjured hands hard and stared down at them with an intensity that I would have found off putting in their place. But they bore up well and we carried them back to the temple where we spent the night.

Although the night wasn't unpleasant I couldn't help but resent the time that we had lost by this little ambush, this little play of clan rivalries. I had the feeling that I sometimes get in politics where there were things going on that I had no control over that was going to cost me everything.

I slept badly that night.

(Author's note: Hey guys. Thanks for your patience. Trip back to the home country followed by jet lag and the flu have kept me away from my laptop more than I would like. But I am back now and will hopefully be able to get back into a proper writing routine again. Thanks again for sticking with it and thank you for taking the time to read it.)

(Historical note: Ooh, I feel all learned.

The incident that Ciri recounts about the two princes seeing the Flying Dutchman occurred on July 11th 1881 at 4am. That we are close to the anniversary of that event is both spooky and entirely coincidental. It happened off the cost of Australia in the Bass strait between Melbourne and Sidney. We know this according to the fact that one of the two princes wrote in their log:

"July 11th. At 4 a.m. The Flying Dutchmancrossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her, as did the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at once to the forecastle; but on arriving there was no vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship was to be seen either near or right away to the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm. Thirteen persons altogether saw her ... At 10.45 a.m. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchmanfell from the foretopmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle and was smashed to atoms"

Apparently, we do not know which of the two princes wrote this entry as the log was heavily edited to make it fit for public consumption before the log was published. The Elder Prince was Prince Albert Victor of Wales and the younger was Prince George of Wales who would go on to become King George the Fifth. The tutor was called John Neill Dalton and I hope that all three men will forgive any assumptions that I have made about their character. These mistakes are entirely my own as I have not had time to do proper research.

Some might say that the log entry is fabricated and for all I know, they might be correct. But I choose to believe it.)