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

103. Chapter 103

(A/N: Spoilers for the Skelligan section of Witcher 3.)

(A/N2: This is another one of those times where I just couldn't get things to reach a conclusion for the chapter so I've cut it into two chunks. With a bit of luck, they should be up over the next few days. Thank you for your patience.)

(A/N3:Yes. Alright, I am aware that the giant only attacked Undvik about a year before the events of Witcher 3. I had been labouring under the impression that the attack was actually from much earlier than that. I have no idea why I thought that. But by the time I realised my mistake, I was too locked into Kunnr's story to go back and change it. If that makes this Elseworld then so be it.)

(A/N4: Warning. Some off colour jokes and scenes of calamity, destruction and described wounds and injury)

"I 'ave the' story from me father." Kunnr told us in his thick accent. "I were nowt bu' a baby a' t' time and so I remember little of i'. I remember a terror. A terror so bloody fierce that it fair threatened ta strike me dead. A terror an' a cold that seeped through the walls of t' house and set people to screaming.

"Bu' I were just a kid and ma sister were even younger than me.

He paused and stared into the fire for a few moments before grinning at the tides of memory.

"Heh. Me mam tol' me to take care of me sister. To keep 'er from crying too much. To keep her quiet and happy so tha' we wouldn't be 'eard by the thing that was coming for us. I were five. I barely knew how to speak, let alone how to quiet a screaming baby. I were jus' as terrified as the baby was. More so even. Because I was aware of just how scared the family was. Just how scared the village were and the clan were. But I didn't know what were happenin'. I just knew that I needed to be afraid.

"I'll never forget that night. Bu' I couldn't tell you wo' happened. Cos I were nowt bu' a baby a' the time and so I remember little of it. So this is 'ow it 'happened according to my father.

"This is how it happened when the Ice Giant Myrhyff came to Undvik and about 'ow Clan Tordarroch were brought low."

It had not taken long for the discussion to take place as to what we were going to do next. The night after Rymer's failed ambush, we sat around the entrance to the cave of Freya and discussed the matter. It was one of those situations where everyone knew what was going to happen but that no-one wanted to be the person that said "So we're doing this right?" Time was running short and we all knew it.

The weather was getting colder and before long, sailing would be all but impossible. Helfdan told us that there were ways and means to move a ship through and, in some cases, over ice, but that sooner or later the risk was that the ice would simply swallow the ship. That there would no longer be ways that the ship could be broken free from the jaws of the freezing water and that after that, the only thing that could be done was for the remaining crew to flee for their lives. Especially in the face of the coming Skeleton Ship.

It was generally agreed by Torvald, The High Priestess and Helfdan himself that no man could stand before the Skeleton Ship and survive. That it's presence would freeze the blood of a person that got too close. That it was so cold that the body and flesh of anyone that got near it would behave in the same way as if that limb had been pushed into a fire. That ice burns were a thing that happened.

For his part, Kerrass agreed that the extreme cold would be debilitating and that we should decide our course of action accordingly.

As we saw it there were three options. The first option was that we should search for any record of the ship in the Elven ruins that occupy the North western most islands of the Skelligan Archipelego.

The priestesses had informed us that there no paintings or records of the Skeleton Ship in any of the nearby Elven ruins. That place that they called "The Garden", saying the title as though it was the only Garden that existed in the world, and for all I know, that might be true. But we all knew that we weren't going to take that option. This fact didn't stop us all from discussing it for hours and hours and hours though.

That might have been an exaggeration. It still felt like hours and hours though.

As well as there being nothing in The Garden, Ciri was determined to point out that, although the rumour of the existence of the Elven laboratory was accurate, that the Elven mage who stayed there had long since moved on taking his skills and knowledge with him. That there would be nothing to find in that place anyway and that we certainly shouldn't plan around it on any level.

So what we were faced with was a long and drawn out search of ruins, where we did not know where many of them were, nor did we know what we would find. All that with the good odds that anything that might have been there would have long since been looted or consumed by the elements rendering any information that we might have recovered long since useless or removed.

Helfdan also added his own particular brand of negativity to this. He argued that an extended expedition to those islands would require some long and complex sailing which would not be easy given the changing weather conditions. He also suggested that we would be in amongst the tight clusters of the islands which would mean that visibility would be reduced meaning that enemies would be able to sneak up on us. That we could round a headland to see the Skeleton Ship itself bearing down on us with no avenue of escape before us.

So we weren't going to go traipsing round the Elven ruins. Helfdan did promise me that he would take me at a later date if my curiosity became over powering but it was generally decided that searching Elven ruins would be a bad idea. The historian in me was a little disappointed but the human part of me chafed at the time that we had spent discussing a point that we all knew we weren't going to be part of in the first place.

The second option was that we would go and try to make contact with the Vodyanoi which was also something that wasn't going to be on our first choice of things to do.

One of the things that I learned upon arriving at the Skelligan islands was that the Skelligans are a warrior race. They are the bravest, strongest and fiercest warriors on the face of the continent and their reputation as a warrior people is well earned and they deserve the fear and the respect that this generates.

But they have one irrational fear. Which is the Vodyanoi.

For those people who live inland, the Vodyanoi are an amphibious race. They live under water in vast cities and although it is only rumoured, it is suggested that their undersea empire is at least as strong and powerful as the Nilfgaardian empire on land. When communication has been possible with the mer-men and mer-women, it is clear that the Vodyanoi are semi-imperialistic and aggressive in their territorial thinking. The truth is, though, that we know very little about them.

They are capable of advanced metalwork as exhibited by the forging of weapons that can withstand the impact of modern continental weapons. They are also able to move around on land with the aid of certain breathing apparatus. There are stories of them around the shores of Lake Vizima where it is said that they can walk around without the aid of such devices but that has never been fully substantiated.

They are also known to have complex religious and cultural influences. The same people that live around Lake Vizima speak of them worshipping the Lady of the Lake as a Goddess and worshipping the dark God Dagon at the same time, which in turn suggests a complex moral structure.

All of this is supposition though so for all I know, I could be making the entire thing up and you should treat my words as being precisely that. There are areas of sea charts that are labelled as being the territory of the Vodyanoi and that no ships, whether fishing, war or mercantile in nature, should go near this outcrop of rocks or that reef. This is because the Vodyanoi consider that area to be part of their territory and are known to react with extreme violence whenever intruders are seen in the area.

They are one of those peoples that it is unlikely that we will get too close to them until we can work up a way to be able to survive underwater for extended periods of time. Or that they can come onto land for extended periods of time without the need to rehydrate.

But the Skelligans have what many, including the priestess of Freya, would call an irrational fear of the Vodyanoi. They call them "Fomori" and to the Skelligan people, the Fomori are the creatures that lurk in the darkness to kidnap unsuspecting or misbehaving children.

According to Skelligan myth and legend, the islands were once the site of a great war, between the Ice giants and the Vodyanoi themselves. That the war between the two people ebbed and flowed with neither race being able to press home the advantage of any short term military victory as the amphibious Vodyanoi could not pursue the ice giants into their halls of stone and ice. But nor could the giants follow the Vodyanoi into the water. So a stalemate was reached until humanity came to ruin that stalemate.

It was harsh fighting on all sides. But there was a significant period where, and again I must stress that I got this information from a story teller rather than actual historical sources, humanity was subjugated and used as a slave race by the Vodyanoi.

The humans of that time would have been extremely primitive by our standards, but according to the information that I have, the Vodyanoi had a puppet King named Bress the Beautiful who ruled over Skellige and forced the primitive humans to fight against the Ice giants on the behalf of the Vodyanoi until the Ice giants were defeated.

After that, the Vodyanoi used those who would become the Skelligan people as slaves on what they considered their islands.

Finally, it was the coming of the God King Hemdall who, along with his children, were able to forge the Skelligan people into the warriors that they are today and lead them into a war that they could finally win.

Yes, I am well aware that this account contradicts many of the other accounts of Hemdall's life. Let alone the lives of his children. I suspect that there were several men, and women, who helped throw off the yoke of Vodyanoi oppression but their names were forgotten. There's the potential for many years of scholarly work to compile these stories into a solid history but I feel that that work can wait for some scholar other than myself.

What is known is that the war was terrible and continued for many years after the final victory of the Skelligan people with Vodyanoi warriors sneaking ashore in the middle of the night to murder, burn and pillage.

This has instilled a racial hatred in the Skelligan people. Again, it is impossible for one side to completely and properly destroy the other as they cannot pursue the other in order to properly destroy them.

But it has also resulted in a terror that is difficult for them to articulate. The fear of the bogeyman in the mighty warriors of Skellige.

Believe me when I say that I took great delight in teasing Svein and the rest over this. A thing for which I was not thanked.

So it was obvious what we were going to do. We were going to sail back to Undvik to the place that the Priestesses showed us and we were going to try and talk to the Ice Giants. After we had failed to manage that...

We were not optimistic about our chances.

Apparently it was common knowledge among the men of the Wave-Serpent that the last of the Ice Giants had been killed by Jarl Hjallmar and Witcher Geralt some years previously. When we had told the High Priestess about this known fact she had given us such a look of Feminine disappointment that we were all instantly reduced to the age of two. It was exactly the same look that Emma gives me whenever I try and suggest something to do with the training company, or the look that I remember from my mother whenever it had turned out that I had outgrown and therefore ruined another pair of boots.

But after that effort had been proven successful or had failed outright, we would then go to that place that the Priestess promised us would result in a conversation between us and the Vodyanoi. Another thing that we were far from being entirely optimistic about.

Helfdan told us, that after that, we would need to start thinking seriously about heading for a home port.

Even according to the most hopeful estimates, The Skeleton Ship would be heading for Ard Skellig by that point and the sea would be freezing. He suggested that we would be cutting it tight as it was.

On the other hand, it meant that our competitors would be fleeing for safety as well. But that was not reassuring.

So we sailed South and I made it my business, partly as a way to take my mind off the pending deadline, to get to know this Kunnr the Shining. A man who I had not yet met as he seemed to be fairly quiet in social situations. He freely admitted that he was a morose and unhappy drinker and as such, was not the best company. There were exceptions to this when his humour improved and he would be wax lyrical and laugh and joke with the rest. But those occasions were rare.

He wore a hangdog expression most of the time. Solemn and unhappy eyes looked out from a reddish beard that he had woven into braods. Braids that also contained carved wooden beads and metal charms woven into them. He was thinner than I was expecting. Much smaller than I had received the impression of but when his anger was on him, he seemed to grow in size.

I have already talked about his history and I got the impression that there was more tragedy in his past that he wasn't telling us about. Even though there was already enough tragedy there to fulfil most poetic tragedies.

He was not a sailor. He struggled with the more complex physical demands of life at sea but Svein would boast of Kunnr that he could row like a motherfucker when he put his mind to it. He was a leader of example. He would do the dirty jobs and never complain which would then shame other men into doing those same jobs. He never moaned about taking a watch, was always the first to volunteer for an unpleasant duty and people respected him for that.

His family was originally part of Clan Tordarroch which were the clan that had been expelled from the Island of Undvik when the Ice Giant had attacked them. It had been this incident that had brought his family low and had, in turn, embittered his father and mother who had gone from powerful people to essentially being beggars adrift on the seas of uncertainty. After the giant had been killed, by an outsider and a member of a different clan no less, Clan Tordarroch had resettled on Undvik but the shame of the giant being killed by someone from outside of the clan had not sat well with Kunnr's father.

The other problem being that Kunnr's father and his mother, had expected to return to their former station in life, being powerful and respected. But the clan had remembered their laziness and sense of entitlement. The clan had had to work hard and fight for survival and Kunnr's family had expected to have their lives handed back to them on silver platters. Which had obviously not happened.

So one night, we were taking shelter from the growing cold so that we could build a fire and have something hot to eat and drink...

Something that Helfdan insisted upon.

…. and I asked Kunnr about the Ice Giants and about Undvik. Someone else must have heard me and so it was Kunnr that rose to stand near the fire and to tell the story of the fall of Clan Tordarroch and the flight from the island of Undvik.

The following account is, essentially, translated from Kunnr's words. He was a gifted speaker but not a gifted story teller. That, coupled with his thick accent, occasionally made his words hard to follow so I have made the relevant adjustments.

One of the things that you have to remember about Ice giants is the old joke. That simple is not the same as being stupid.

I have another insight for you. We had planned everything in the defence of Clan Tordarroch. We did everything right. We had watch towers and guard posts. We had light houses for sea invasions and our harbour had been trapped so that only those ships that were our friends and carried our pilots would be able to dock at our harbour. We had a twelve foot high palisade with a stand on it so that our archers could fire over the top and javelin throwers could answer with heavier fire.

The approaches were bare. We had removed all of the boulders, trees and bushes and had insisted that no houses be built until they were well outside our arrow range. There was no cover so that any attacking force would have to charge over open ground to get to us. All the time being peppered with arrows and spears and walking through all of the traps that our imaginations could come up with.

We might not have had the engineering behind us that somewhere like Kaer Trolde had or has access to but we were a formidable fortress anyway.

Giant Crossbows stood on firing platforms around the gates. Our warriors trained diligently and white stones marked the ranges of how far the arrows and bolts would fly.

Our warriors were as highly trained as any that could also be found amongst the isles. And our smiths and smithy were among the best that could be found. Even today, Clan Tordarroch weapon and armour smiths are amongst the most sought after craftsmen in all the lands, and on the continent too, from everything that I hear. The trees on our island made the strongest bows and our archers could out-shoot the best archers found anywhere on the continent.

We were feared. FEARED everywhere we went and when Clan Tordarroch colours were raised above a raiding ship or above our armies, then men knew that they were in for a fight.

But it was all for nothing.

It wasn't just our fighting forces either. We were as prepared as we could be for all kinds of disasters. We had buckets of sand in case of fire. Several wells within our settlements as well as stream water. Every man and woman knew exactly what to do in the face of an encroaching enemy, earthquake, fire, avalanche or tsunami.

And we were proud of our accomplishments. We were never big enough to properly challenge someone like the An Craites, the Drummonds or the Tuirseachs. We did not have the religious significance of Clan Heymaey or the stark reputation of Clan Brokvar. But we were Clan Tordarroch and we were proud. We knew that we were safe from just about all attackers. We knew that if an enemy landed elsewhere on the island and attacked over land, that we could meet them and destroy them. There was nowhere to site siege weaponry, nowhere to put staging areas and any long term campaign would result in the starvation of an attacking force.

We thought of everything. Absolutely everything but the most simple of things. We did not think of a giant who could throw rocks.

It was night time when he came, Freya curse his name. It was full dark and bitterly cold. Cold enough to crack stone or at least, that is what my father told me. The Skeleton Ship had just passed and the world was still covered in snow and ice, there was still more snow on the air and you could see the ice hanging in the twilight, reflecting the flames and the breath of the men and women that clustered around their homes.

But it was night time when he came. My father was commander of the Northern Gate. He told us that the first thing that we knew about the coming of the giant was the sign of flames on the horizon. It was dark and it was cold and the land was covered in snow. So the sound and distance seemed strange but in the far distance, flames could be seen leaping into the sky. Leaping and dancing round like fingers waving.

We thought it was an attack by men. That some raider or something was taking advantage of our weakened state to come and raid our coastline. When everyone was still recovering from the snow and cold, someone had thought that our guard would be down. We laughed and joked and told bitter lies to ourselves. We told each other that those men would regret coming to Undvik and that we would show them their errors. That we would tear our vengeance from their flesh with hooked blades and that they would be reminded of their errors at the points of daggers.

Morning came, cold and grey and warriors were sent out to investigate the flames. Good men all. Strong men. Proud men and they went out to find out what had happened. To ask the questions that you ask. To hunt for survivors and to look for enemies to take our vengeance upon.

They returned later that day. One man was openly weeping but no-one thought any the less of him. The leader of the band described a scene from the horror stories that our parents tell us to get us to go to sleep. He spoke of bodies torn apart. About heads and limbs crushed like pieces of fruit. About hoses that had been flattened, literally flattened like an egg having been dropped from a great height.

The Jarl asked careful questions. We sent a druid out there to see what could be seen. If there were any signs of magic being used. If there was the residue of the force, or the green fire of a spectre or any of the other things that might have taken place. There was even talk about sending for a Witcher given everything that had been seen, but as far as anyone knew, there wasn't one on the islands at the time after King Bran had made his feelings on the matter quite clear.

(This is a little unfair. King Bran is commonly thought to have had a considerable anti non-human bias. But if I actively look into it it would seem that he didn't have any kinds of prejudices more or less than anyone else on the islands at that time and place. As for his attitudes regarding Witchers? He was of the opinion that such matters that would normally employ a Witcher should always be dealt with by a man. If there was a spectre, then he would send for a druid or a Skald. If there was a monster attack, he expected his warriors to take care of the matter. He would commonly say things along the lines of "Depending on others is a weakness and depending on Witchers is part of that." But when I looked into it, I could find nothing else that was actually recorded that might suggest differently)

The Skald was consulted as to what it could possibly have been that could cause such a catastrophe. But nothing fit everything. No one solution could be dreamt up as to what could have happened to that small fishing village.

That we were under some kind of attack was not in any doubt though and our people were brought inside the walls of our keep. What else could we do?

But as it turns out, that was the equivalent of putting all the livestock in one place so that the wyvern can take it's pick of an all of it can eat feast. Or putting all the valuables into one box so that the thief can just pick up the box and make their escape easily to open the box at their leisure.

But we were under attack and that was what we did when we were under attack. Our keep had defended us before and we were confident that it would do so again.

Father would tell the story over and over again. I don't remember much of what he was like, back before the giant attacked. I would like to think that he was a happier man, a good and kind man before the giant came.

He was powerful enough, strong enough and well regarded enough that he was given command over an important guard post. He had men that answered to him and his wealth was not small. It was a position of trust and, as can be seen in my armour and axes that I inherited from the man, he was strong enough to gather gifts and well liked enough by our lord to be able to keep them. My mother never had a cause to leave him or take a lover on the side. I remember a happy place, a happy home and much laughter although I suppose that that might be because of the rosy hue of distant memory.

I like to think that though. I like to think that he was a better man before that.

But on the other hand, it meant that he saw something that night that broke him. I have no idea what it was. We were never close enough to be able to talk about such things.

I was just a small boy though and I was afraid because the adults were afraid. That communicated fear where adults are there with the tears of terror running down their faces while they beg all of us to just remain quiet. Just for a bit longer. Just a bit longer until father can get home. Just a bit longer.

But then we heard the bells start to ring.

Father would tell the story when he was trying to get my sister and I to behave. He would tell us about what happened as a warning while he threatened to send us back to Undvik in order to be a snack for the giant.

Or at least, that was what I was threatened with. My sister was threatened with much darker things. I hated him for what he threatened my sister with. I remember the way her face hardened in the face of it and I wonder which of those many threats it was that finally made her mind up to leave.

He told us about how a distant watch tower just exploded. About how the fire had already been lit so that we could see as far out from the keep as we could. He said that it was as though the sword of the Gods had just cut the tower down and that the top of the tower flew off into the night.

Which was when the bells started ringing.

I remember being woken up from my bed. I had that happy skill of the very young. The ability to fall asleep at the worst possible moments and then stay asleep for hours at a time where no sound, no shaking and nothing could rouse me from my slumber. It was a time like that and I could feel the pull of my blankets and my pillows like a physical thing. Like bonds of iron or the arms of a warm woman on a cold day. I remember blinking my fatigue away and seeing, really seeing the fear in my mother's eyes and I remember starting to weep.

"Hush," she told me, "or you'll scare the baby."

I remember thinking that the baby was obviously already scared. I remember thinking it as though the thought was coming from a separate part of me. It might even be true that the assumption regarding my sister was only true in hindsight and I am remembering it differently. But I remember looking at the bundle of cloth and blankets that one of the thralls was carrying and hearing the whimpering coming from the bundle and thinking that the warning was foolish.

There was an odd kind of whistling noise coming from a vast distance away followed by the most almighty crash that I had ever heard. It was a thing that you felt in your chest and in your belly more than something that you registered in your ears. I remember yelping in some kind of shocked surprise more than fear.

"Quiet." my mother half shouted and half whimpered the word. Not just to me but to the thralls, the baby and more than a little bit to herself.

We made our way through the house to the hearth where someone had already pulled back the vast rug in the middle of the floor to show the great shelter. We called it that but in all truth, it was little more than a storage area for extra tables, benches and goods that were needed in case of extra guests and visitors. Another one of those precautions that old Lords had insisted would be part of every dwelling in case of attack from the sea. Places for women, children and old folk to hide from the falling arrows.

But it wasn't arrows that we were hiding from. The missiles being thrown at us were boulders from the mountain side and huge tree trunks hurled like spears from the forests where the Jarl hunted and from which we cut our lumber. We all went into the depths.

I remember the little details of that place. I remember the straw pallets that were quickly pulled out. I remember the smell of stale vomit from where a guest had drunk too much, been sick and no-one had thought that the vomit would seep beneath the floor. I remember the rack of sharp knives next to the door. Or they should have been sharp anyway. I had never seen anyone setting aside the time to maintain them so they might have been dull and rusted to the point of unsuitability.

It was not reassuring. Those knives were the last line of defence. Not so that we could protect ourselves, but so that important people could not be taken alive by raiders and used to extract a ransom. I always hated that. I always wanted to be able to turn around and say that hostages can be rescued.

But I also wonder how many of those knives were used that night and in the days that followed.

Over and over again we heard it. That strange whistling sound followed by a thump, deadened by distance and the travelling of sound through the earth of the floor. Or at least that was the best option. The worst was when the missile hit something and what we heard was the cracking and splintering of wood and the shattering of stone.

I have never heard a sound like it. Not since. The closest I can think of, is that sound that you hear when a ship breaks itself against the rocks in a storm. When the stone punctures through the hull and the ship snaps in two. That sound, the cracking of the keep is the most awful sound that you can imagine?

It was like that. Over and over again as cross beams of houses broke. As the trunks that made up the pallisade wall simply broke in half under the onslaught.

It seems obvious in hindsight. Painfully obvious even. We had planned for everything. Absolutely everything. We had planned for invasions over land and invasion by sea. We had put thought into how to withstand a siege and how to kill encroaching attackers. We had even put plans in place in case it turned out that our attackers were more monstrous than being entirely human. We could, and indeed had, defended ourselves from harpies, Vodyanoi raids, pirates, raids from rival clans and one memorable time where a Nilfgaardian baron, upset at our raiding of his shipping, had sent an expeditionary force in order to "chastise" us for our "cheek". We had fought off all of those things.

But the one thing we had not prepared for was what we would do if a giant decided to just throw rocks and trees at us from a distance.

We had thought about siege weaponry but we reasoned that there was relatively little flat land to site such things and if a person was able to land enough troops onto the island in order to set up the siege weaponry then we had other problems to deal with.

But a single Giant, wandering backwards and forwards over the island, uprooting trees and setting them alight in the spreading fires, from where he had destroyed our watch towers, before hurling them at us. From picking up the huge boulders and just sending them flying at us.

We had no protection from that.

Some people criticised us for not mounting a counter attack. I cannot answer for that. Father always claimed that the giant was always outside arrow range but with the destruction of the watch towers and the stamping out of the watch fires, it was dark and the rest of the other factors meant that we simply couldn't see him. So where would we send our warriors?

I have no answer to these questions.

There is also the factor that our warriors were already busy. They were running into burning buildings in an effort to save those people that were taking shelter within. They were pulling injured people out of collapsed buildings, clearing debris and trying to warn people away from wherever the next stone was going to come from.

So to any man who might accuse our warriors of cowardice, I would say this. You try running into a burning building to rescue someone. You try running across open ground to get to this person or that person, or to carry a screaming child to safety. Dubious safety at that.

You try standing your ground on a wal,l while an unknown and unseen enemy picks you apart at their leisure. You try doing all of that and not running for shelter yourself, and then I will let you call the warriors of Clan Tordarroch cowards.

You also have to remember that we still didn't know what was happening. It might seem obvious now that we were under attack by a giant but at the time...?

All we knew was that we were being bombarded by these missiles and that those same missiles were being thrown with astonishing accuracy. Not that they needed to be too accurate. When trees and boulders are the things that are being thrown then they don't need to be too accurate to cause untold damage.

There was also the relentlessness of it.

He just never got bored of sending those things at us. Just as we would begin to think that it was all over, just when we would be able to stifle our tears and calm down, just when the young folk, which included me, had just begun to settle down and go back to sleep in those shelters that hadn't been damaged or otherwise ruined. There would come that odd whistling noise followed by a crash. Then would come the screams and the shouts and the sounds of men running around.

It was like...

That moment when you are not on duty so you have every intention and every capability of staying in bed. You have the permission and the desire and everything is set up. A nice warm bed, a willing woman or even an enthusiastic woman and you settle in for the night's sleep. You sleep, but in the early hours of the morning you are woken by something. You don't know what it is though, but then you hear it. Just on the edge of hearing. You hear a dog barking.

Then it will stop and you can feel yourself beginning to sink back into the pleasant land of slumber where dreams come and the worries of the day start to disappear.

Then the dog starts barking again. And again and again. Then, even when it stops barking, you cannot get back to sleep because you lie there, waiting for it to start again. There is nothing that you can do. And then slowly, you begin to feel the hate and the anger beginning to well up inside you. How could the owner of that dog allow it to continue barking like that. Why is the dog not tied up. Why do they not give the dog something to do, something to chase or... well... anything really.

Then you start to want the dog dead. You would never dream of it in real life. You would never be cruel to an animal that guards you while you sleep that might be crying out for something.

Then your imagination gets hold of the thing and you start to wonder what it could be barking about. Are their enemies starting to attack the gates, sneaking through the early morning mists and now...EVERYONE is ignoring the dog and trying to get some sleep.

That got a little bit out of hand there, but that was what it was like. We just stayed in the shelter, huddling together in an effort to stay warm, to help each other with our fear and... heh... trying to keep the baby calm. All while being unable to stop ourselves from listening for the next falling boulder, the next whoosh of flames and the next cry from a hundred throats of "Incoming."

It was relentless. All I can really remember is the smell of my own urine as I unashamedly wet myself in terror and I was by no means alone. I remember the vomit of one of the Thralls and the shaking, cold sweat of my mother. I remember the screaming of my sister and the constant efforts to get her to be quiet on the grounds that the attackers might hear her. Not that they could, over the rest of the screaming and shouting that was going on around the place. But these are the lies that we tell ourselves when the world is ending around us.

Dawn rose slowly that day and the onslaught finally slowed to a crawl when the sun first showed herself over the horizon. There were still the odd boulder thrown, the odd tree launched at us like a spear but... I suppose the giant was getting tired. Or the game was no longer as fun as it had been. I suppose that even mass murder must become tiring after a while.

There are many reasons as to why our family destroyed itself. But I remember that the first time I saw it happening was that morning, when father sent another warrior to see if we were alright. Another warrior rather than coming himself. I remember the tightening of my mother's mouth and the slight narrowing of her eyes. Even as a boy of five summers I knew that this was the herald of my mother's wrath and I remember feeling the relief that that rage would not be directed at me...

This time.

But a warrior came and we were helped out of the shelter into the cold light of the morning. We had been lucky really, The trapdoor under which we were hidden was under the correct side of the house. A tree had fallen on the other side of the building which had punched through the roof and buried itself down into the floor. Another boulder had taken off the corner of the building but that debris had fallen on the outside of the house, crushing another woman that was running... somewhere. I didn't recognise her though. I couldn't have, as all I saw was her legs sticking out from under a huge beam of wood before my mother saw the same thing and ordered one of the thralls to cover my eyes.

I remember tears.

(He spent a bit of time staring into the fire after that. His face had gone kind of still. When you can convince Kunnr to speak he actually becomes fairly animated with expansive facial expressions and gestures but there was a memory on him now. He spoke quietly and I was not the only one who leant forward to catch what he was saying. That he said it with no emotion at all... spoke to me in a way that I could not have articulated in a normal way.)

I heard the worst noise of my life... of my existence that morning. It was a noise that I can't possibly communicate in any other way. It was a noise of a grief and pain so profound that it reached down my throat and sunk a blade into the depths of my soul.

Worse than a sound that a wounded man makes when the weapon enters his belly and he realises that the rest of his life is going to be filled with almost constant awful pain. Worse than the sound a man makes when you shatter his face with an axe. Worse than the sound of rage that a woman makes when she is betrayed and worse than the howl of a loyal hound who is kicked by their master.

I have never heard this noise since and I pray to all of the Gods that I believe in and all the Gods that I've heard of and even the Gods that I can barely dream of, that I will never hear that noise again.

It was a primal noise. A basic noise that was born from the part of humanity that was made before we emerged from caves and started to build castles and houses. It was the kind of noise that our throats are not really supposed to be able to make any more.

It was an old woman that made that noise. I saw her that morning scrabbling at the still smouldering wreckage of a house. I knew her. She was this formidable old woman, Grandmother to half the town and Great aunt to the rest of us. She was the kind of woman who was always baking cakes for children and who always disapproved of the people that her children and grand children married while, at the same time, lavishing a love on those children and grandchildren that was intimidating in it's power.

I had always been told that she had been a shield-maiden when she was younger and that morning I learnt the truth to that rumour. She had an axe at her side and a shield on her back. Worn over a torn nightdress that was smudged with soot. She was on her knees, digging with her hands, tossing stones and pieces of wood aside and over her shoulder.

Then she stopped, she had found something. She tugged and tugged and pulled and pulled. Then she lifted something and pulled something aside and I saw a small, broken body. Then she made the noise. Part howl, part scream, part groan of pain and grief. She looked around herself with wild eyes as she cradled the broken body of a child that must have been no older than myself. Her eyes were wild with pleading, some state of mind and body that had taken her beyond tears and into some kind of raw horror that existed beyond that.

And she just made that noise, over and over again. As I watched, a younger man ran over to her and tried to pull her away.

She fought him.

She was by no means alone that morning. All over the town there were men and women searching ruins for loved ones. At first, they did so frantically and almost aggressively. Later on, when it became clear that there were not going to be any survivors to be found, they did so slowly, mechanically like those golems and things that you hear about.

I must have been in my own strange state of shock that morning as I remember very little of it after that. I must have slept or something. It seems to me that I can remember every second of the previous night but that morning, indeed for most of the day, I don't remember almost any of it. I must have eaten, the community was pulling together, doing those things that communities do when they are hurt. The best of humanity can be seen in times of crisis.

But also the worst.

(He wiped a tear from his eyes at that point. A number of people looked away from him.)

But that didn't come till later when the other clans started to take advantage of us. But there and then, we rested. I was wrapped in a blanket, handed my baby sister and pushed into a corner. We were both exhausted and I honestly believe that it was this moment where the two of us got over our nonsense and we have been close ever since.

But then and there, The baby and I slept. So what happened that day? I only know from my father's stories.

The Jarl had survived. I could make some kind of comment about him hiding somewhere in order to avoid the bombardment. I could make jokes about him being lucky or something but the truth is that I simply don't know what had happened. It's just as likely that the Jarl's guard knocked him unconscious by virtue of a club to the back of the head before carrying him off to a safe place against his will. I certainly know that we have a similar plan when it comes to dealing with Lord Helfdan if it ever comes to that.

But the Jarl survived and to be fair to him, he made some good decisions. He ordered that the Warband go out to scout out what was going on. To look for our enemies. To form some kind of counter attack. After all, the only good defence is a good offence right?

Which is when we found out about the giant. He had not been stealthy. His foot prints were everywhere, deep indents in the ground where melted snow from all the fires ran into them, leaving these huge puddles that told so eloquent a story. It was a trail that even a child could have followed and follow him they did. All the way up the mountain where the Warband found him asleep in a cave.

I sometimes wonder as to how the world might be a different place if my father had gone with that party. But he was still in the main town, doing his best to shore up defences. Rebuild the gates and re make the walls. It was an impossible task and to be fair to him. Father almost killed himself in trying to get it done. I have that story from other men, not just himself. But he was a soldier and a guard and he was facing an enemy that he did not know and did not understand.

He was afraid. He was afraid and like so many men, he reacted to that fear with an anger that must have been terrible.

But I am telling of the fall of Clan Tordarroch, not the fall of my family. The Warband snuck into the cave. They levelled their spears at where they thought the most vulnerable parts of the giant should be and attacked.

There is so much criticism of the way things were done. The Jarl of the clan was furious. He maintains that the Warband should have come back to gather reinforcements and yes that might have been a more successful tactic. But it also might have led to even more of our finest warriors being killed in that opening attack.

Other camp fire warriors and men who sit around their hearths and drink mead rather than actually serving their friends and families in some way. Men who always look back on the events are quick to point out all the things that we did wrong. That the Jarl did wrong and what we should have done in that moment. All of them are right and all of them are wrong at the same time. All that can ever be said for certain is that we lost a lot of good people that day.

According to the survivors of the war band, the Giant had formed some kind of alliance with the Siryns that lived on the slopes of the mountain and one of them was watching the approaching warriors as they crept up to the cave with weapons drawn. The scream of the Siryns must have cut through the slumber of the giant and he woke up with a growl and a bellow of rage.

According to the stories I heard later, he had this huge club. He had made it out of the rib of a ruined ship that had crashed into the shore. He simply stood up and swung it, killing three warriors with the opening swing.

As it turns out, no matter how fast you are, no matter how well armoured you are or how well you brace with your shield. If a giant hits you with a club when he swings it at full strength, then you will be sent flying through the air and probably into a wall or tree if you don't hit the ground. Then you not only have to survive the first impact of the club, but also the second one too when you collide with whatever it is you hit.

Even the best armour in the world can't protect you if you land on your head and break your neck.

Likewise, the best armour in the world can't protect you if a giant picks you up and bites your head off at the neck, nor if you are knocked flat and trampled into the dirt.

Father used to claim that he could see the warriors bodies sailing through the air from the impacts of the giants club, or the giants foot.

There were two survivors. The first was carrying the second and had been sent back to us in order to carry word back to the keep in order to let us know what we faced.

The second man had been struck with the club. We couldn't find any injury on him but his body was swelling up and turning dark. He died later that night, vomiting up a black blood.

The Jarl ordered that the alarm smoke was sent up. Designed so that all nearby ships belonging to the clan would be recalled with all possible speed. Another one of those precautions that was put in place in order to help us resist invasion by human forces. For miles around that pillar of black smoke ordered all of our longships back home. Including those men and captains that were still back in Kaer Trolde having witnessed the passing of the Skeleton Ship. Men were climbing aboard ship and stowing oars, the ice of the Skeleton Ship's passing was beginning to melt by this point but it would still be difficult going.

But we knew what we were dealing with now. We knew about the giant and we knew what we were going to be doing next.

It is at this stage of events that nothing can be hidden any more. Things were going wrong and no matter how far the story goes, or how much my father tries to convince us of the fact, or himself of the fact. The simple truth of the mater is that disaster followed disaster followed disaster.

Up until this point, we think that the Giant had been enjoying himself. He had been laughing and chuckling to himself, but the attack on his home had driven him mad with rage. So now he was an angry giant.

The other thing that we learned that night was that giants are actually really powerful and are capable of bending certain lesser creatures to their will. Creatures such as Siryns and other creatures that are better able to function in the cold.

(I saw Kerrass shifting uncomfortably in his seat. I could well imagine him thinking "well if you'd asked a profession, we could have warned you about that but..." To be fair to Clan Tordarroch, it had already been stated that there wasn't a Witcher in the area so, who would they ask. I suppose it was just a remnant of Kerrass' professional pride that made him squirm in his seat. Ciri, in comparison, was wrapped in the story and did not mover or comment.)

We spent the rest of the day setting traps, relighting fires, coming up with all the deadly things that our imaginations could come up with, all the things that might slow down or otherwise inconvenience a giant made of ice.

Again, of course we know now that giants aren't made of ice. That the blue skin colour is just something that they have in the same way that we have a pink skin. But that didn't help us at the time.

But we had fallen into the same trap that had been our downfall in the first-place. We were thinking as though we were facing a human enemy. An enemy that can be confounded and slain.

We were not. We were fighting a force of nature.

When the hurricane comes, you do not stand in the way of the hurricane. You flee from it. You hide and take the best shelter that you can. And so it should have been here.

But the warriors were defending their homes and they had convinced themselves that they could win. The result was inevitable.

Another of the roots of my father's bitterness was that he was ordered to command the rear guard. He was the man who was held back among the other warriors that were protecting the Jarl of Clan Tordarroch, the women and the children. The fact that his own wife and children were among the people that he was protecting seemed immaterial to him.

He was always convinced that the best of Clan Tordarroch died against the Ice giant and he longed to have been with them. He had wanted to die like that, not cast away, a refugee, hiding on Ard Skellig, living off the charity of others. Like all warriors I suppose that his pride was injured. The island was his and to lose it while still being alive...

I think it broke him in the long term.

Because the giant laughed at all of our little precautions. When we had teams of archers out there, peppering him with arrows, he laughed and swung his club sending the men flying high into the sky. He had swapped his former club made out of part of a ship for a small tree. He'd pulled a lot of the branches off and swung away with impunity.

We had soaked parts of the ground with lantern oil and set fire to it as he walked across it. He ignored the flames. When we threw oil at him in small clay pots and then set fire to him. He just slapped at the flames until they went out.

He dodged the ballista bolts and his skin was so tough that our own axes and swords barely pierced his skin. Even our blades, the fabled weapons of Clan Tordarroch, did little to actually hurt him.

("Steel swords against an Ogroid's skin." Kerrass muttered. "No wonder they lost. And that'll be why Geralt and Hjallmar succeeded."

It also bears mentioning that Clan Tordarroch smiths were well known as among the best on the face of the continent. My dwarven friends will want me to say that they are the best human smiths but then they will agree to the assessment. So Kunnr's assessment and protest was deserved.)

All the while, every single swing of his club killed our men by the half a dozen at a time. It was obscene how utterly ineffectual we were being.

The giant played cat and mouse with us. His raining down of rocks and trees on us continued. He would run in, kill some of us and then run off. Anyone who claims that giants and trolls are stupid were not there over those days.

In the end, the Jarl lost his nerve and ordered our evacuation. All of the women and the children were loaded onto ships and ordered to sail off.

My Father? He was the man assigned the task of overseeing that evacuation. He was not pleased with this.

I have wondered as to why he was given that task. Those who were feeling more charitable might suggest that the Jarl was sending his own wife and children away and as such the task was given to one of his most trusted Huscarls.

(Freddie: Huscarl is a term for personal warrior. Literally meaning "House Warrior" which might mean personal guard. It seems certain that Kunnr's father was some kind of standing guard or standing soldier for the clan. In the same capacity that Helfdan employs Svein's wife and fellows)

The less charitable might suggest that my father was useless in any other capacity. According to some of the other people that saw it, my father had lost hope. He was unable to come up with anything useful. He was shooting down other ideas and telling everyone that everything that was being tried was going to fail and that they were all going to die. That Clan Torrdarroch was doomed.

That is not someone you want on the front line. I have heard both stories and in all honesty, I could even believe that both stories are true. Having seen the bitter and angry man that he became, I can well believe that my father was broken by what he saw and what he did that day.

What do I remember? I remember the fear. It has a smell to it. A cold and bitter smell, a mixture of sweat, puke and piss that makes for a heady aroma. I remember the roared cadence of the oarsmen as they pulled at their oars to get us away.

I remember the splashing waves and the spray against my face. Then I remember the whistling as the giant saw that we were getting away and hurled his stones after us.

I remember the broken rhythm of the oars as men rowed together who did not know each other. I remember the smashing sound as one of the hurled boulders clipped the back of one of the other fleeing longships. I remember the people on that ship hitting the water and freezing to death before they could drown.

I remember the screaming match between my father and the Captain about going back to rescue the dying people on that ship.

I remember the steady thumps of leftover ice from the skeleton Ship's passing bouncing against the hull as we didn't have enough time to steer round them. I remember the groans from the people aboard ship as they heard these things and the scraping of the ice, the splintering of wood and the grunts of the men that were baling out the water that came in through those cracks.

I remember the desperation. The awful need to survive that was on the adults. The children were afraid, of course we were, how could we avoid being scared given how the adults were playing up. But we didn't understand, not really. We were afraid because the adults were afraid and we didn't understand that desperation. We did not understand the things that were happening to us. For some reason, that makes things worse.

I remember the moment that we landed on Ard Skellig and turned to wait for all the other men who had remained behind to see off the giant and cover our retreat. And they never came.

I understand that there were a few survivors though. But they didn't arrive until later. But I do remember the despair that we all felt.

And that was it. The fall of Clan Tordarroch to the ice Giant. And yes, we should have hired a Witcher, or one of the mages that come through the islands occasionally. Hjallmar was not the first Captain who tried to take on the Ice Giant but he was the first that succeeded. It is not lost on me that he had a Witcher with him.

We set up a life in exile on the shores of Ard Skellig by the grace of Clan An Craite and also...yes... by the grace of Clan Drummond. I know that after the death of Madman Lugos, it is fashionable to hate that clan, but they were good to us over the years of our exile.

We returned to Undvik when the giant was killed and are in the process of rebuilding our homes and our lives. Our clan Jarl is now the youngest son of the man who ordered the evacuation of the island. He treated me fairly and I like him. But he is a young man and I think he struggles with the fact that our independence is bought by the actions of another clan.

I don't think he likes that.

It's going to take generations before we are able to bring the clan up to the strength that we used to command. And it was the giant that took it from us. If they come again, we will be ready for them.

Kerrass came over to sit next to me on the bench that I was sat on and handed me a bowl of soup. Kerrass and his sign of Igni was being used more and more to provide the heat that we all needed to survive. He moaned about it, but he knew the need as much as anyone and as a result, we could make sure that we could have something hot to eat at the important times.

And now was one of those important times.

"Are you alright?" He asked me.

"I'm fine Kerrass," I snapped. Thus proving that I wasn't. "Why do you keep asking me that?"

"I keep asking you that," he told me, dipping a lump of hardened trail bread into his own bowl of soup. "In the same way that you once kept asking me the same question. And I will continue to ask you the question until I get an answer that I believe. So..." He spoke so calmly. I hope that, when our situation had been reversed, I had been as calm. "Are you alright?" He used some of the bread to scoop some of the barley that was being used to thicken the soup into his mouth before biting into the bread.

I wanted to respond with my normal answer. To tell him that I was fine. That I was alright. That I was sleeping fine and that I was getting by on life. But I wasn't doing any of those things.

"I'm scared." I told him. "I know every reason why we're doing the things that we're doing and going to the places that we are. Fuck, I even made some of those arguments myself. But it's taken us four days to get even this far back towards Undvik and all I can think about is that we could have used that time to be searching Elven ruins for signs of the Skeleton Ship's passing and what the Elves thought about that."

"Excellent." Kerrass said happily. "Now we're getting somewhere. Go on."

"My fingers itch with the need to be scrabbling around in the dirt and climbing through ruins. But instead I can feel a stiffness in my limbs and a panic scrabbling at the back of my throat."

"Why?" Kerrass' tone of voice spoke volumes. It was almost eloquent. He knew the answer as much as I did. But he was prompting me with it. He wanted me to say it.

"Because we're nowhere." I told him. "Absolutely nowhere. That's the other thing that my fingers itch to do. I want to go back to that encampment of druids and I want to choke the answers that I want out of that stupid ass-hat of a Druid. He knows where my sister is, or at least he can point is in the right direction. He can set our feet on the next step and he's holding it back from us. Just as he's holding back everything he knows about the Skeleton Ship."

"Yes he is." Kerrass agreed.

"So, in the meantime we're running around, trying to solve this problem that Skelligans have been trying to solve since they settled on this part of the continent. And I know that's how it works. I know that that's how it works. That we have to do something for him before he will do something for us. But we're absolutely nowhere on it. We questioned that druid and he told us nothing that we didn't already know. We went out and spoke to the men who's job it is to look out for the Skeleton Ship and collect news of it and sightings of it and they told us sweet fuck all. Not really. They told us some cryptic bullshit and deepened the mystery for us..."

"That's hardly their fault." Kerrass interrupted gently.

"I know that Kerrass but I still want to take that same cryptic bullshit and put it together with all of the other cryptic bullshit that they tried to feed me while I was there and jam it down Ragnvald's stupid smug throat until it chokes him."

"Surprisingly vivid coming from you Freddie but ok." He smiled as he said it, cleaning the last of his soup out of the bottom of his bowl with the remains of his bread.

"So then we go off to the other side of the islands to consult with the priestesses, which is where we discover that there's a faction of Skelligans that don't want us to stop the Skeleton Ship. An attitude that I cannot understand even though I've been trying ever since it all happened."

"Is it really so hard to understand?" He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Fucking. Yes." I told him flatly. "This is a thing that has been killing Skelligans since they came here. Even if there are relatively few deaths when the ship actually passes through the islands, then the knock on effects are awful. Harvests are ruined, winter stores are decimated, the entire culture comes to a halt for... what a month? Why do people want this to carry on?"

"You're not stupid Freddie, you kno..."

"Of course I bloody know the blood answer to that too. It's because it's always happened. It's a part of the culture. Because change is scary, even when it will probably be for the better. But what if the change is for the worse? Because sometimes the terrifying darkness is more familiar and comfortable than the harsh and unfamiliar light. And sometimes, the light is a flame. I know all of those things Kerrass. But I don't understand it. And I am far from entirely objective here.

"But I've left the point. The point is that learning that there were factions of people in the islands that have, not only learned what we intend, but have also decided that they would rather kill us than allow it to happen. Now no-one would notice the loss of a Witcher or a minor Lord of the North..."

"I think you might be surprised there." Kerrass sniffed derisively.

I ignored him.

"But in killing Ciri they would bring the wrath of the Continent down on their heads."

"It's actually worse than that." Kerrass smirked. "We're actually not tied to getting rid of the Skeleton Ship. The Queen still wants the final decision on that regard. So that same faction is trying to subvert the Queen's will in this. How much are you willing to bet me that the people that are doing that are a grumpy group of bitter men who are still pissed off that the new Queen of Skellige is both female and successful?"

I considered this for a minute or two. "That's going to come up in the future isn't it."

"More than likely." Kerrass smiled at that.

We sat in silence for a while. Kerrass gestured at my soup. "You should eat."

He wasn't wrong, my stomach growled at the suggestion and I finished it without really noticing.

"My problem is this." I told him after carefully setting my bowl aside. "We are still no closer to actually solving this, getting the answers that I want, or that we need and time is getting short. And all the time, I'm sat here on the Wave-Serpent, just waiting for time to pass, on the way to another place where we're going to try and talk to someone who has no inclination to help us, will probably want to fight us and might not know anything in the first place."

"And who will probably want something in return for helping us, even if they do help us." Kerrass agreed.

I suddenly found the entire thing funny. Kerrass had planted a needle into my bad mood, the same as he always did.

"We're no closer to finding out what the answer is." I told him after a few minutes of chuckling with each other. "And we are running out of time."

Kerrass sighed. "I know what the answer is." He told me. "I know how to fix it."

I stared at him.

"The answer." Kerrass said. "Is that druid. There are two possibilities. We know that that ship comes from a different world. Ciri's story proves that. So I think that that ship was coming through the islands. For reasons of it's own. Maybe it fell through a crack or a gate or a hole or whatever you want to call it, which meant that the ship came here all that time ago. Then one of two things happened. The first is that that druid stole something from the ship. That that item that he stole is what is responsible for his longevity and immortality. The other option is that he is a crew-member of that ship. That he saw land and leapt over the side, swimming to shore. Then he survives because of his connection to the ship, frozen in time... or something. I haven't entirely figured out that bit but it's unimportant really."

He scrubbed his hand across his mouth.

"So..." I started speaking a lot more loudly than I had intended and took a moment to calm the fuck down. "So what the fuck are we doing here Kerrass?" I demanded. "Let's tell Helfdan to turn for Kaer Trolde right now. We can be back over there and safely in dock with the Wave-Serpent out of the water and out of the way of the coming ice while we ride over to the Druid's enclave and get some answers."

"And that is precisely why we aren't doing that." He told me.

"What?" This time, I didn't try and keep the words quiet.

Kerrass sighed. "Slipping again Freddie."

I took a deep breath. "Then explain it to me." I bit the words off carefully. Desperately scrabbling for the calm that I was also well aware that I was losing.

Kerrass scratched his chin.

"You remember when we were investigating your Father's murder?"

I stared at him a bit more. "No Kerrass. That's just the sort of thing that I am likely to forget."

"Yeah I know. But you smiled."

"Fuck you Kerrass."

"But you remember that your brother refused to talk to me?"

"I do."

"So it was obvious that he knew something. It was the most suspicious thing that we had going for us. One of the first real leads that we had. I could easily have kicked the door in and demanded that he answer my questions. But we had nothing to go on, other than that he knew some important things and we knew that."

"We did."

"But if I'd assaulted his guards to get in with just my hunch, your family would, quite rightly, have kicked me out of the castle. I knew that your brother had some information for me. But I didn't know what. I didn't move on him until I knew, until I had something to properly confront him with. The same thing is happening here. That druid is the key to this. I know that. He could solve everything, I know that too. But I can't prove it. I have no corroborating evidence or testimony. So, to get to him I would need to kick down his door and probably end up killing a few people that don't need killing. Which, in turn, would mean that I would be kicked out of the islands at best and hanged at worst. A thing that I would deserve. But it's for things like that that Witchers, Feline Witchers especially, have a bad name and are ostracised."

"One of the reasons anyway." I commented.

"Now don't get me wrong." Kerrass ignored my comment. "I will do that if it comes to it. But the other factor is, that if I kick his door in and kill a bunch of people, any enticement that he has to tell us what he knows about your sister's disappearance is also gone."

He was right. Of course he was right. He was always right and sometimes I hated him for that.

"So the other thing that you're telling me." I said carefully. "Is that I should start coming to terms with the fact that events are conspiring to make sure that I'm not going to find out anything here. That in dealing with the Skeleton Ship, the druid is involved and may just refuse to tell us anything."

"Or that he knew nothing in the first place and was lying to you in order to get what he wanted out of the deal. In this case, a Witcher to get rid of the Skeleton Ship for him. Even though, I strongly suspect that if we did get rid of the Skeleton Ship, that he would grow old and die on the spot."

"That might be what he wants."

"It might." Kerrass agreed. "But you need to start getting ready for that Freddie."

I nodded. I wasn't happy but it was a thought that had occurred some time ago, although I hadn't articulated it.

"I'm sick of waiting Kerrass." I told him. "I want answers and I am sick of waiting for them. I've already come to terms with the fact that my sister is dead. I hated that realisation and I hate myself for coming to terms with that fact and now believing it. I'm becoming deathly afraid that one day, sooner than I want to, I am going to stop caring about looking for answers."

"You won't stop caring Freddie. It's not in your nature."

"Maybe not. But how long before I care about something else more." I shook my head. "Either way. No matter whether we're talking about searching for what happened with Francesca, getting the information from the Druid, or finding the solution to the situation with the Skeleton Ship. Time is running short."

We both looked up, almost at the same time at the huge pillar of red smoke that towered into the sky.

"Yes." Kerrass said after a moment. "It does rather play on the mind doesn't it."

A lot had happened since we had fought off Captain Rymer's ambush.

We had sailed back for Undvik as soon as we got back to the Wave-Serpent and were heading back south to come back round the shores of Ard Skellige. The journey was becoming routine now, almost boring. I was getting used to the shoreline now, the standard feeling of it all. As we had before, we sailed into Helfdan's home village and spent the night.

It was a bleak moment. There was none of the greetings that we had been met with before, none of the good wishes and best thoughts. Instead, there were a lot of admonishments that we should stay home, that the Skeleton Ship was coming and that we would all be better off if we stayed in the warm and the safety. At the time, I was thinking that it was all a little bit much as the lovers of the men that we journeyed with were quite... fervent in their efforts to get the men of the Wave-Serpent to stay behind.

I was aware that these thoughts were being born out of my own impatience and desperation to get something done. A feeling that had been growing since the ambush at the temple of Freya. And the fact that I knew this made me feel like the ass-hat that I was. But it was not a feeling that was going away.

In the end, I took to Svein who was understanding.

"You have not seen it yet." He told me. "You have to remember that the last thing that the ship does before it turns for Kaer Trolde is to sail around Ard Skellige in a circuit. The villagers here see the ship at it's worst and at it's most terrifying. They huddle together for warmth in the great hall and watch the frost climb the walls and make the earthen parts of the floor begin to glisten with frost, despite the huge fire in the middle of the room. You cannot blame them for their fear. I feel the same fear myself."

The efforts of the villagers to get us to remain behind were so strong that Helfdan had to announce an amnesty. He told his men that any man who wished to remain behind to care for his family during the coming catastrophe would be able to do so without being thought any the worse of. He told the village and his crew that he was aware that we were sailing into danger and that his doing so was, for him, a matter of duty and therefore unavoidable. But he would go alone if he had to. That he would ask no man to come with him who would rather be at home caring for his family. That that was duty enough.

One man remained behind. At first he wanted to come with us, the same as the rest of the sailors and warriors that were coming with us aboard the ship. But the other men pointed out that his wife was due to give birth within the next couple of weeks and that a man should be there when his wife gives birth. They pointed out that raiders would take a season off when a baby was born so that they could properly care for the infant in question. It took a lot of work but eventually he was persuaded although he fought it every step of the way.

We made up for the lost numbers though. Both from the wounded men who were left behind on Hindersfjall and the man who stayed behind.

We slept but were woken early by an alarm call as the warriors and guards were tumbled out of bed by a horn winding inn the cold, misty light of the early morning.

The light of day still came early in the day itself. Technically it was still the back end of summer but the cold created the illusion of winter which meant that dawn was still early in the day. So the cold light of morning, as well as a creeping mist greeted us that morning as a longship came round the villages head-land. It was a small ship, smaller than the Wave-Serpent and to my eye it was built for speed. It's small size meaning that it could come into the fishing parts of the dock. It had a large red and green sail and it looked fairly new to my eyes. As it tied on a man in armour moved to the prow of the ship and stood there in full armour with a helm on and a large shield that was similarly painted in quarters of red and Green.

He looked like the story book definition of a Skelligan warrior.

He just stood there for a long while, one foot on the rail of his ship and resting his other hand on a rope that hung just over his head.

I found myself next to Ivar. Svein was assembling guards and warriors along with his wife who was shouting at the others.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Do we not need to get moving?"

"We do," Ivar agreed, "But first, we need to find out what's going on."

"Who is that?"

"That is Finnvald Borstisson."

"Is that important?"

"It might be. That isn't his normal ship."

"What's he doing?"

"I thought you knew this. He's letting us know that he is real."

Helfdan had emerged from wherever he had been. Wiping his face with a cloth. He was still in his shirtsleeves and despite his breath steaming in the cold air, he was ignoring the cold. He buckled on his sword belt and glared down at the harbour and the ship that waited there. I saw Svein moving to join his lord and I went to be there as well. I wanted to stick my oar in and argue that we didn't really have time to fuck around.

By the time that I had got there, it looked like Svein had just finished talking. Indeed, it looked as though Helfdan had just cut Svein off with a gesture. I looked around and found Ursa moving towards the group as well as Ciri and Kerrass.

Helfdan settled his sword on to the point at which it was comfortable and folded his arms.

The entire tableau was frozen for a long minute.

Then Helfdan shook his head violently. "Fuck this." He muttered audibly before stomping down towards the harbour, Svein and the rest of us trailing after him.

He stomped along the quay before he stood, almost beneath the waiting man.

"WHAT?" He bellowed up at the waiting warrior. "You come in peace and to talk. So what do you want?"

The waiting man was plainly startled by the... up front approach and the presumably broken tradition. But I was firmly on Helfdan's side in this. It was absolutely true. We didn't have time for any of this bullshit. Finnvald, for that was indeed his name nodded and made a calming gesture before turning back into his ship and climbing round so that he could get out onto the jetty properly.

"Greetings Helfdan." He held his arms out and the two men embraced. I got the feeling that there was a certain formality to the gesture though. As though it was something that both men just wanted to get out of the way as fast as possible. For such a short gesture, it was oddly like watching a dance.

"What do you want Finnvald?" Helfdan asked abruptly and more than a little rudely. "I need to sail with the next tide and I don't have a lot of time for the normal song and dance. Is it just you? That's not the Sea Sword that you've just sailed in on."

"It isn't..."

"Then what...?"

"Helfdan, Gods dammit." Finnvald was laughing. "Let me just talk for a second will you."

I saw a flash of anger in Helfdan's eyes but he squashed it quickly. I have no idea if Finnvald saw it but Svein and Ciri certainly did. I saw Ciri widen her stance slightly.

"The Queen sent me." Finnvald told us. "We had heard about what Rymer was doing and the Queen sent me to come and support you."

"Since when were you a Royalist?"

"I'm not. But the Jarl is and where the Jarl orders..."

"You follow." Helfdan finished.

"As you say." Finnvald bowed slightly. "We knew that we would cross your path if we came South and if we didn't find you here then we would sail West until we found you or until we were running into some serious ice."

"Well you found me, so now what?"

"Helfdan..."

"Now what, Finnvald." Helfdan insisted.

"I have Sixty men. Twenty with me here on the Storm Blade and another forty following behind me on the Sea Sword. We are here to help you with your mission."

Helfdan nodded, staring at the other man's face for a long moment. "There are factions arranged against us." It came across as a warning.

"Yes. There are also merchant ships that are hunting for the Wave-Serpent. Nothing that you would worry about of course but if they found you while you were camping in a cover somewhere?"

"Hmmm." Helfdan stared at the sky. "How long before the Sea Sword catches up with you?"

"A few hours. They should be coming round the head land now."

Helfdan nodded. "Then we camp at the Shell cover tonight."

"We will follow you." Finnvald told him. The two men grasped wrists before Finnvald turned to climb back aboard his ship.

Helfdan turned back. "I want to sail as soon as we can." He told Svein. "Day light's wasting."

Svein signalled and we all scurried back to the hall. I saw Helfdan shiver, finally showing signs that the cold was beginning to get to him.

"It's been a long time since I saw Finnvald." Ciri said to no-one in particular.

"He has not changed a great deal." Helfdan told her. "He is still sometimes a bully and hides it with humour. He is still looking for the quick way to become famous and rich rather than being willing to put the time in to the work and he is still never satisfied with anything. He wants bigger, more, prettier and better."Ciri did not comment on that as a Thrall handed Helfdan a leather over shirt and his dark blue tunic. He handed his sword belt to Svein who was waiting and started putting the warmer clothes on.

"I am being unfair though." Helfdan went on, "I have difficulties with all the people that I knew from back there and back then." Something flickered in Ciri's eyes although I could not tell what it was and I was watching closely. "He is a good raider, an excellent warrior and a fine ship's captain. If the Queen sent him then she must have had a good reason. But he will be unhappy in trying to work with me."

Helfdan turned to me as Svein handed him his sword belt back.

"He will almost certainly try and convince you that you would be better off sailing with him rather than me."

Helfdan wasn't looking at me as he said that He was staring off to one side and a little down. I chose my next words carefully. "Would I be better off?" I did my best to keep my tone neutral.

"As I say, he is a fine sailor and a fine warrior." Helfdan told me after a small amount of thinking. He didn't seem uncomfortable by the question and I was watching carefully I thought Ciri might have been surprised but Kerrass didn't react. Just watching the the surroundings.

"He has more men" Helfdan hadn't finished his assessment of Finnvald. "And he has an extra ship which is faster than the Wave-Serpent but not by much I would guess as that crew will have killed itself to get down here so fast against the Sea Sword and they will be tired." He thought a bit more after making sure that his sword belt was tied properly and sitting in a comfortable position. "I am the better sailor." He decided after a while. "But he is a better fighter. More men and the extra ship are not advantages that could just be tossed aside though."

I nodded at that. I had not really been serious about the question. But something had compelled me to ask it. I thought that I might have just wanted to hear the words, or an honest assessment of what we were dealing with. I suppose that most of all, I wanted to know whether we could trust this new Ship Captain and the men that came with them. I had struggled with the sudden cessation of hostilities between the men of the Wave Serpent and Captain Rymer's men. The way that, the moment the fighting was over, they were treating each other like long lost friends and family when a moment earlier they had been trying to kill each other. I was struggling with that.

Again, there are logical reasons as to why that would be the case. The first reason is that they really were, probably, friends and family. Distant cousins and the like. I had discovered that there were lots of inter marrying between the clans as well as families that had moved and gone elsewhere in search of work and a better life. There was also the factor that Queen Cery's changes had meant that the old clan lines were not as hard as they used to be. People didn't hold onto them quite as much as they once had.

There is also that factor that Sir Rickard had once told me about. About how fighters on opposite sides of a conflict can often discover that they have more in common with each other than they do with the people leading the battles on either side. That if you put soldiers from opposite sides of a war in a small space and it won't be long before someone offers a hand to shake and then someone else offers a drink of water from a skin or a canteen and before too much longer, people are dancing, singing and trying on each other's helmets.

Only to go back to killing each other in the morning.

But I hadn't got a real answer to the question that I had most wanted to ask. That being as to whether or not we could trust the new man and his crew. I didn't feel as though I could just ask such a thing outright as Skelligans get touchy about that sort of thing. Although Helfdan probably wouldn't care about the question or even think of the impact on his or the other's honour. I suspected that Svein, at the least, would hear it as well as others.

I nodded and pretended to consider the question. "I think," I began slowly. As though I was still making my mind up. The solution was obvious to my mind but I felt the need to drag the entire thing out for, I dunno, drama or something.

"I think. That I am better off finishing the job with the men who set my feet on the path. With men who have already shed blood on my behalf."

Helfdan nodded and turned to stomp over to the Wave-Serpent. Svein clapped me on the shoulder and moved to follow his master.

To this day, I remain convinced that if I had decided to go with Finnvald instead of Helfdan, then Svein and the rest would have been upset and a little bit angry. I think Ciri would have been, if anything, a little disappointed and that Kerrass would have been confused more than anything.

But Helfdan himself? I don't think he would have given a damn.

We set sail, Finnvald actually sailed with us that first day so that Helfdan could bring him up to speed on where we were, what we were doing and where we were going. He nodded carefully and asked a series of questions of Kerrass and Svein between them. He and Ciri shared an embrace as if of old friends with him making a dirty joke and Ciri laughing although with a certain edge to her laughter that suggested "Ok, that was kind of funny. And also, I will let you have that because we have known each other for a long time. So I will let you have that one. But any more jokes like that and I will cut your dick off. Just so we're clear." I think he got the message. He certainly didn't make any more jokes of that nature during the time that I was there.

We camped that first night in a larger cove than we would have normally with the Wave-Serpent and the Storm Blade beached in the cove while the Sea Sword boasted an anchor and stayed out at sea under the guise of standing lookout. The concern being that a bigger group of ships would be more likely to attract the merchant attackers that we were beginning to fear.

It was the middle of the following day when the red smoke rose over the horizon. I was doing my best to sleep in the bottom of the Wave-Serpent. There is precious little to do aboard ship and I found that I struggled to do more than doze and read. Writing was out of the question but I could, at least, enjoy a book and have a snooze. I was struggling at that point though and although I was tired to the marrow of my bones, my brain was too full of thoughts and feelings for me to be easily able to drop off.

But on the other hand, there was more than a good chance that we were about to face an Ice Giant or three in a fight. It rather struck me that it would be wise to be well rested in advance of that. So I was doing my best to get some rest, even if sleep was impossible, when the look out called.

It was a curious kind of piercing whistle and it roused me from my blankets with speed. Ciri and Kerrass were already up and just about the entire crew moved to one side to see where the lookout was pointing. And there we saw it. A dark red pillar of billowing smoke like the finger of some great, dark God standing against the horizon.

I remember being surprised at the size of it. That analytical, scientific part of my mind that lives with me for most of my days. I remembered the plateau of the Skeleton Ship lookout tower and the relatively small pile of wood that was there. I remember looking at the column of smoke and thinking "Well there's no way that that small pile of wood could make that much smoke, they must be using a hell of a lot of oil."

Which is true. That was literally what they were doing. But while I and everyone else on the Wave-Serpent and accompanying ships stood next to the rail and watched with horror as the smoke went straight up into the sky, ignoring the snow and the wind and everything else that was coming down, there was that small part of my brain that was wondering just how much oil it would take to produce that much smoke.

A slow kind of peace settled over the wave-Serpent. I don't really know why. One of those strange kinds of foibles of human nature I suppose. The wait was over now, the last expulsion of doubt and the last fall of the axe. There was no waiting, no wondering and no imagining of the things that were to come. They were on their way now and there was nothing that we could do to stop it.

The Skeleton Ship was coming.

Helfdan let us have a few minutes of staring up at the clouds before he called us back to whatever it was that we had been doing before then. Most men went back to their preparations. We were moving with the wind and moving quite steadily at that. Men went back to sharpening their weapons and repairing small damages to their armour in the sure knowledge that such things would very probably mean the difference between life and death.

For me, I sat on a bench and watched the smoke rise steadily into the sky until it went above the clouds and disappeared from view. The clouds that were heavy with snowfall. Eventually I pulled a blanket round my shoulders as I began to realise that I was shivering. Whether the final sighting of the ship meant that the temperature dropped, or whether it was just the knowledge of the coming horror that made me shiver I was not able to tell.

I was reminded of a similar feeling in Kalayn lands when we had watched the mist coming down off the mountains. When Chireadean, Rickard and myself had watched the slow tendrils form and begin to creep down the mountain side. It was a very similar feeling to that although I couldn't tell you why.

I found myself muttering the same lines that we had recounted that time "The ground will shake with their coming. Frost and mist shall be their herald and their hounds will play under their feet. Arrayed in black steel with sharp swords that glitter with ice. Terrible to behold as they herald the coming of winter. A winter that will never thaw. Their leader will come with a crown of ice and his face shall be as a skull. And where his blade strikes, the blood and the very marrow in the bones shall freeze. The worms in the ground shall shatter in the cold."

"The Wild Hunt." Ciri said as she sat next to me. "Not one of Dandilion's better works if you ask me."

"I always preferred his account of your parent's love for each other." I agreed.

Ciri smiled. "Storm dark hair and violet eyes that spoke of lightening." She quoted. "A beauty and a wit so sharp that it would cut the hand that tries to adore it."

"Did that beauty ever cut Dandelion?" I wondered. It was often a thought among some of my fellows that Dandelion might have been jealous of his friend's love for the Sorceress.

"No I don't think so. If they had met before Dandelion had known about Dad's love for her, then he might have had a go and I doubt he would have turned down a roll in the hay. But he wouldn't have gone anywhere near that after Geralt met her. He would not have done that to his friend. For all his pretences, Dandilion is cleverer than he looks and behaves especially when it comes to women."

"Are you sure about that. He does occasionally seem to choose the worst possible choice out of all of the options offered to him."

"Ah, you are talking about his self-loathing. He is getting better with that though. Father says that he is growing up and even settling down. I think it would be fairer to say that he is getting over himself a bit."

We sat together for a while. "You've seen the Skeleton Ship before haven't you?" I asked her.

"Yes." She admitted after a while.

"What's it like?"

She shook her head. "I saw it as it passed through the harbour. My understanding is that it is a very different beast in the harbour than it is when it sails the island. Uncle Crach once told me that it is the difference between the wild and angry cat protecting her babies in the wild, versus the calm and tamed cat that comes into the Kitchen in the evening for a bit of bacon or chicken." She sighed. "If you are really wondering whether or not you should be afraid? Then I would say that you should be."

"Oh, I knew that." I told her. "But how afraid. That's the question I need the answer to really."

She sighed again as she thought about this. "Pretty fucking afraid I think." She told me.

For the rest of that day, there was little to do other than to just sit and watch the smoke climb ever higher into the sky. It was hypnotic, watching a bulge that started forming as a little billow of smoke become bigger and bigger until it eventually rose beyond sight. But it was a good way to take my mind off the fact that we seemed to be sailing in a straight line towards the smoke itself. Which meant that we were sailing in a straight line towards the skeleton ship in the first place.

We slept on a small island. Bigger than the one that we had used the last time that we were in these waters which was when we met the rest of Finnvald's crew. I tried really hard to like them but there was a certain amount of...

It was like I had lost the intimacy of the entire thing. It was getting too big for me and becoming unwieldy in a way that I did not like. The closest thing I can think of to this feeling was from when I was a student living in Oxenfurt. A couple of friends and I hadn't seen each other in a while having been distracted by work and women and so we had resolved to get together to drink an unseemly amount of alcohol and to generally bitch and moan to each other until we decided that we had put the world to rights.

I had been really looking forward to it.

Things started off well, sitting and drinking in our favourite watering hole until the place started tog et busier and busier until we were screaming at each other so that the other people could hear what we were saying.

So we went to a different pub. This was a mistake.

Because some other friends found us there. Suddenly, a night drinking with two of my closest friends was a night drinking with two of my closest friends plus another two people who I liked but didn't know very well. Then they attracted three more people. Then someone commented that there weren't any women in the growing group of people and so some were found and enticed over to our table with the promise of free drinks. Then they brought their friends and boyfriends and suddenly it was this whole thing that had gotten out of hand when all I really wanted to do was to sit and have a good old fashioned gossip with my best friends.

I knew Helfdan and although, to say that I liked him would have been a bit extreme, I respected and trusted him. I certainly liked Svein and his brothers, Ivar, Thorvald, Sigurd and the rest were easily becoming dear to me and with a remarkable amount of speed. But now there was another sixty men here. More names to learn. More stories to hear. But now it was beginning to break down. Whereas before we would all gather round one fire to tell our stories and things, this was now impractical and we had to spread around separate fires. I would have been welcome at all of those fires, but somehow, I didn't want to join any group.

They were strategising anyway and I was struggling to get my mind to focus on the details.

It turns out that, like many of the islands of Skellige, Undvik is built around a mountain that rises high in the sky. This mountain itself was the last bastion of the ice giants before the Human and Vodyanoi forces forced them back into their own realms. The thing that the Priestesses of Freya had told us was that there was a cave in the side of the mountain that was, according to legend, the portal that you would take if you wanted to cross over into the realm of the Ice-giants.

I had wondered how anyone knew this but no-one could tell me that. Nor could they tell me how many giants there might be in this cave, or why any of the giants hadn't invaded Undvik like the previous Ice giant had.

There were a lot of unanswered questions going on and I was happy with none of them. But the prospect of speaking to the Vodyanoi had filled the Skelligans with terror and there was, to my mind, even less likelihood that searching elven ruins would produce results so... here we were.

Kunnr was consulted as, having lived on Undvik, he had the most knowledge of the local terrain. He informed us that the cave that the Priestesses had told us about was on the Northern part of the island. Yes, the mountain and cliff face there was not as high as it was on other parts of the island but it was not small. The beach was difficult to reach by land so that when men and women of Clan Tordarroch went down to the beach to hunt for Crabs and pull in driftwood, they would be taken there by smaller fishing ships that would drop them off and then pick them up again before the turn of the tide. Otherwise, there was little or no reason that anyone would go there.

He had no knowledge of the cave in question although he could lead us to the part of the beach that the map was marked with to get to the cave in question.

The point was talked around for a long time but eventually it was decided that there was no way we could decide how we were going to approach the situation until we knew what the situation actually looked like.

It took everyone far too long to come to that realisation if you ask me, but we all went to bed.

The smoke continued to rise the following day. Towards the end of the day we started to see small points of light starting to appear on the islands further to the North. They were like twinkling stars that we could only just see through the haze of cold coming from the sea.

"Good," was Helfdan's assessment of this. "That means that the ship is heading North."

Kerrass almost laughed at that. "Where did the priestesses say that the rendezvous with the Vodyanoi would be if this meeting with the Ice giants doesn't work?"

"To the North." Svein was also grinning.

"So what we're saying is." Ciri joined in the graveyard humour. "This had better work."

"In my experience," Kerrass went on. "Such comments are like prayers."

"I didn't take you for being superstitious." Svein teased.

"I'm not. But in my experience. Comments like that are invitations for the Gods to play with us."

"That might be true." Svein countered. "But when Gods play with mortals, it nearly always means that life is going to be interesting."

"You say that like it's a good thing." Helfdan finally joined back in. "Having said that. It is still good that the ship is going north. It means that we can focus on the giants rather than worrying about setting lookouts to be careful of where the ship is. As for the Vodyanoi question? We can worry about that problem when we get to it."

"That is less than entirely encouraging." Ciri told him.

There were some other developments over the course of that day as well. Despite the pending arrival of the Skeleton Ship, there were still plenty of sails on the horizon and more than one of them were coming up behind us. Helfdan didn't seem too worried about it and neither did Finnvald but it was taking all of my self-control to not utterly flip my top over this development. It was all getting a bit much and as a result I was slowly sinking into a slump. There was just something so overwhelming about the entire situation.

But there was more to it than that. A sensible person would have told Helfdan that enough was enough and that we should all have turned for home by this point. That we should head for safety.

Giants, Vodyanoi, A spectral ship, unknown, unlooked for friends and the very real possibility of pirates comiing up behind us. All the while a cold that was already meaning that we had to protect ourselves from the elements and a promise that that same cold was only going to get colder.

But try as I might, I could not bring myself to go and tell Helfdan to turn for home. Nor could I tell Kerrass and Ciri to give up or anything else that I genuinely wanted to do. But I just couldn't.

Ciri was also struggling with the passage through the waters off the northern coast of Undvik. She had wrapped herself in her hooded cloak while deliberately sitting with her back to the Northwestern tip of the island. There is a strange kind of headland on the Northwestern point of Undvik which forms a kind of land bridge over towards an island. On this tall, craggy and inhospitable place is a lighthouse like construction but calling it that is vastly underselling it.

The tower is called the Tor Gvalch'ca which translates from the Elven tongue to mean "Tower of the Falcon" although there is an emphasis in the original word which specifies that the Falcon is a female. I have no idea why and the Skelligans around the place don't seem to have any kinds of better idea. Instead they avoid the place and a regular story is told that the place is haunted by a beautiful woman in a long white dress that sucks the souls out of any man that goes near it.

Kerrass had heard the story before and scoffed at it telling me that spectre's don't do that when they appear as described and if they were doing anything else, then the locals would know about it. He guessed that the locals had invented a story in order to keep children from climbing over the forbidding, loose, unstable and otherwise dangerous looking structure.

He was probably right. But neither did this entirely explain the profound effect that it had on Ciri. She was obviously miserable and withdrawing into herself. Of all people it was Helfdan that offered a solution to her mood.

I had tried to talk to Ciri a couple of times but she wasn't going for it, at best, I was getting one or two word answers. I had wandered to the back of the ship to have a look at the pursuing sails when Helfdan spoke, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Is the Swallow alright?" He asked.

"What?"

He repeated his question without any kind of inflection that would suggest that he was frustrated at anything.

I considered the matter. Some men were rowing, others were playing at dice and cards while still more were just sitting around and talking. Kerrass was sat grinding some herbs with his Mortar and pestle.

Ciri, alone, was doing nothing. Just sat there with hunched shoulders.

"No." I answered. "I don't know what's wrong and she won't tell me but... No she's not alright."

Helfdan nodded. Glanced up at the sail for a moment.

He had started to sweat.

"Would you..." He blew the rest of his breath out of his mouth and gritted his teeth. Then he took another deep breath. "Would you ask her to come back up here?"

"Ummm."

"I...uhhh..." He was breathing heavily before he had another try. "I might be able to help. Tell her that I have a question for her."

I thought about it for a moment before shrugging.

Ciri looked at me with a strange haunted look. "He wants what?"

"He has a question for you."

Ciri took a deep breath of her own and put her hand up to cup her forehead for a moment. She looked... vacant.

"Fine." She got up and stomped to the back of the boat. "WHAT?" She demanded of Helfdan.

He looked startled as though she had slapped him.

Ciri sighed and wiped her face with her gloved hands. "I'm sorry Helfdan...sorry... Lord Helfdan. What do you... What can I do for you?"

Helfdan waited a second. I thought he was gritting his teeth but he hid it well.

"I was..." A tremor shook him. "I was wondering if you wanted to steer for a bit."

Ciri stared at him. "I thought you had a question for me."

"I do." He countered before another shudder shook him. "I wanted to ask if you wanted to take the tiller for a while?"

Ciri was surprised. I certainly was.

"I thought..." She swallowed. I had a sudden feeling that I was intruding. "I thought that women weren't allowed to crew a ship."

Helfdan shrugged. "You are the Swallow. Unless I misremember all the things you used to tell us. You are the heiress of Ard Skellig and An Skellig." He smiled slightly. "Surely the supersitition doesn't apply to you."

"I ummm." She grinned suddenly. "I can sail small ships but..."

"Then I shall teach you." Helfdan had also relaxed, suddenly seeming more comfortable in his own skin.

I stood and watched for a while. Helfdan was a good teacher. He struggled to talk to her whenever he was supposed to talk about anything other than the sailing of his ship and I noticed that he wasn't looking at her, even more so than he avoided looking at anyone else. But I also sensed that there was a certain amount of bonding going on.

She was still sailing when Kerrass and I finished our conversation.

"So do you think he's getting sweet on her?" Kerrass asked me after our conversation had faltered a little bit.

"Who?"

He gestured towards the back of the ship with a nod.

I turned to look. "Nah, I don't think so. She's not been doing well whenever we've come past Undvik and I reckon he's doing his best to take her mind off things."

"Good, it wouldn't do us any good at all if he started developing a crush on Ciri."

"Not going to happen." Svein told us as he approached. "Sorry, couldn't help but over hear. That man has had his heart set on one woman since they were all little."

"Fair enough." Kerrass agreed. "Is it time?"

"I do believe it is."

Kerrass stood up and moved to the front of the ship with Svein as we were getting closer to the shore. I stood and started putting on my armour.

"Alright, lads, let's all listen to the Witcher now?"

"Here it is." Kerrass began. "Ice Giants are tough bastards. There skin is tougher than old leather and their muscles are like knotted steel. If you try and hit one with the sharpest sword or the heaviest axe then all you're going to be doing is dulling your blades."

The Wave-Serpent crested a wave and crashed back into the water.

"When arrows don't bounce off, they are unlikely to penetrate deep enough to cause any kind of damage and hammers are just as harmful as a good heavy slap to them. Yes, they have tender areas and their balls are generally in the same place that a human keeps his..."

"What about Giant women?" Kar called.

"Still looking for a wife, brother mine?" Svein yelled at him to much hilarity.

"Hey, if she's willing, why not? Two giant tits as big as my head, what's not to love?" Kar protested.

There was more laughter and more than one nervous glance to where Ciri was wrestling with the tiller.

"No-one in living memory has seen an Ice-giants daughter." Kerrass told us. "They are said to exist and there are records of such. But you should be careful. If such a creature comes forth then you should be careful. They are said to have long dark hair, pale skin and are beautiful enough to drive men wild."

"Sounds like your sister Kunnr."

"Ha ha haaaaaaa, go fuck yourself."

"Seriously though." Kerrass interrupted the banter. "They are drawn to the warmth of a human male, or an Elf or Dwarf or... But to love them is to be frozen to the point of shattering. As I say, there hasn't been one seen since well before landing. But rumour has it that they are the brains of the outfit. They appear to be human sized in stature and can use a form of magic that is to do with ice and cold. We should pray that we only meet the male Ice giants."

The ship started to lift in the water again as we came to the top of another swell.

"OARS." Ciri called in a shrill voice from the back of the boat. I took the opportunity to glance back at her. She was stood in an almost identical posture to how Helfdan himself stood at the tiller. She was slighter than the man though so her posture was a little wider and I thought she had a little tighter a grip of the tiller. She was grinning fiercely and I thought I could hear her laughing but the wind was carrying it away from me. Helfdan was next to her and I guessed that he had just whispered something in her ear but he was now putting on his own chain-mail and strapping his own wrist guards into place.

"The first mistake," Kerrass went on, "when dealing with Ice giants, or any kind of monster really, is to assume that they are stupid because they can't speak. Their mouths are different to ours is all. And from Kunnr's story, we know that they are far more intelligent than we give them credit for. So yes. They do have veins and arteries and things that you can cut that will cause them pain. But they know that too and they are skilled at armouring themselves and protecting themselves using whatever is lying around."

There was another crash as we crested a wave again. I had to hold onto a rope to keep my feet.

"Don't even try to block." Kerrass carried on his lecture. "It won't work, a single blow from a fist, club or whatever weapons that they wield will shatter shields, break limbs and make an impact hard enough to break your ribs through the rest of your body. Speed and mobility is best. Watch for your opening and strike fast and true."

The men growled. Everyone was putting on armour now, shrugging on mail, strapping weapons and shields into place. Placing helms on heads and helping each other.

"Stay calm." Kerrass told us. Raising his voice over the sounds of the waves and the spray. "Take your time. The more we can frustrate him and the angrier he gets, the more careless the giant will become. Which means the more openings for us."

"Sounds like Haakon." Someone joked, I thought it was Thorvald and the men laughed with him as Haakon stood and glared about him. He looked terrifying to me and I wouldn't have wanted to make jokes at his expense.

Armoured men traded places with the unarmoured ones that were working at the oars.

"Now for the good news." Svein bellowed. "Our Witcher friend has not been idle since Hindersfjall. Unlike the rest of his kin."

There was some more jeering from the other men who were now putting their own armour on. The Undvik coast was getting closer now. The oars were helping.

"There are three bottles coming round that are filled with a type of oil that is poisonous to creatures like the ice giants." Kerrass called. "Take a cloth and smear it into your weapons. Do so in the same way that you would use weapon oil. You're looking for a slightly grey tinge to the metal. Do not be stingy, there is plenty."

"How does it work?" I thought it was Perrin that called the question.

"It gets complicated." Kerrass said.

"Which means he doesn't know." Ivar cracked to more laughter.

Kerrass' eyebrow rose. "Ice giants are magical creatures. The complex chemical and magical reactions that are created in the mixing of the herbs and substances together gives off a magical effect which disrupts the magic field that gives the Ice giants their strange and exaggerated toughness..."

"Alright," Ivar was laughing with the rest. "I take the point."

"I can talk about the magical fields interacting and working to destroy each other if you wish." Kerrass went on. "It's to do with the individual makeup of the disparate..."

This time the laughter was aimed at Ivar who held his hands up to acknowledge the fact that Kerrass had won. But he remained standing, not giving up the ground. "Does it work for those of us that use clubs?"

"And hammers?" Ursa called from where he was working on one of the oars.

"It does." Kerrass told them. "But that's the bit I don't know how it works so don't ask me how that bit happens." There was a bit more laughter. "But don't do anything as stupid as trying to confirm the kill. All of the other stuff still applies. Same as it would with a human. Remember that the limbs work the same way. Back of the knee, ankles, elbows. They have a rib cage and although the belly will be covered in muscle, there are plenty of other ways to get in to serious internal organs that will have a much more profound effect. But don't stay still. Ever."

"Speed, power and surety are our best weapons here. Keep your temper."

"Now, there is another problem which is the harpies."

"What?" Ivar asked.

"Ice Giants sometimes have the power to bend lesser creatures to their will. As I say, it is a mistake to think that these things are stupid. They couldn't do that if there wasn't something serious going on in their skull. They can control Necrophages and, Siryns and Harpies. So Archers should watch the skies. Finnvald and his crew will be covering us for that. But the job of taking out the giants will be ours."

The men of the Wave-Serpent growled their approval.

"Remember that we want one alive." Svein reminded them all. "At least one. And we will be trying to talk first." I wondered if it was my imagination that said that more than one person looked at Kunnr when they said that. "But if a fight starts. We finish it."

The crew roared at that. One or two men clashing their weapons against their shields as they gave throat to their thirst for combat.

"But caution." Kerrass told them. "Strike hard, strike fast. Let Freddie, Ci... the Swallow, or myself lead."

My head jerked up. I was expecting to stay back. I normally end up out the way. Kerrass was looking at me, grinning in that horrible way that he gets, the smile of a cat that spies the mouse. "And Good hunting."

This time the crew really did roar.

"All hands to the oars." Ciri called. Both she and Helfdan were leaning into the tiller now, both of them fighting to keep the ship steady.

I desperately wanted to help but experience has taught me that I know almost literally nothing about physical labour and that it's better for everyone if I just stay out of the way and let the professionals get on with it. I held onto the rope and watched the shore get closer. The water seemed different to my eyes. Thick and a little soupy but there was a ship on our right and another on our left. Oars dipping into and out of the water in a strange unison. It was like a dance.

The water stung in my eyes and on my skin. The bitter cold of it was like a thousand tiny needles digging into my skin. But it was actually far from unpleasant.

It took me a moment to realise it but the crew of all three ships were chanting. Not quite together but they were the same words even though I didn't understand them. The oars settled into a cadence and the Wave-Serpent leapt forwards like a hound scenting the pray.

Ursa stood at the head of the ship, standing on the prow and to my astonishment, he started to dance. He was singing. The madness was contagious and I found that I was laughing.

Svein was next to me and straightened from vigorously rubbing his weapons with the oily rag. Then he stood up and took a deep breath.

"Gods." He bellowed. "I live for this." Laughing he turned and clapped Kerrass on the shoulder, sending the Witcher staggering into the ship rail. Then he spun and pulled me into a fierce embrace. "Going off to face the Ice Giants. There's a thing that I get to tell the Grand children. Alongside a northern lord, a Witcher and the Empress of the World. I, Svein the hard hand, son of Magden, warlord of the Black Boar, go to face the Ice Giants."

He shook me. "Thank you my friend. Thank you."

He laughed again and he was not alone.

Sigurd stood from his oar to be replaced by a grinning Svein and ran to the side of the ship where he vaulted the rail. I ran after him to see him land on one of the oars. Then he started to run, up and down the oars as they rippled. He was laughing.

Thorvald was stood in the middle of the deck, arms wide and palm upwards. It was then that I realised what was happening. These men were praying.

It was Ivar's turn. "SEEM ME HEMDALL. SEE ME, YOUR SERVANT. I SAIL TO WAAAAARRRRRRR."

More men would stand to be replaced by those other men that had made their prayers and their offerings. I saw a man cut his palm and squeeze the blood over the side. I saw another man place his axe on the deck and start to dance around it.

Kerrass and I stood and watched as the madness seemed to consume the men of the Wave-Serpent.

I turned to look at Helfdan who was watching the sail, alternating between the sail and the shore. That was his prayer.

Ciri was next to him, wild eyed, wild hair and with a wild grin.

I was still laughing.

Then as the shore approached. Things calmed and Svein moved to the front.

"WE ARE THE CREW OF THE WAVE-SERPENT."

"ROOS." The men roared back at him.

"WE ARE THE WARRIORS OF THE BLACK BOAR."

"ROOS."

"WE ARE THE STRONGEST."

"ROOS."

"THE MOST DARING."

"ROOS." Shields and weapons were clashing.

"AND THE MOST FUCKING TERRIFYING RAIDERS THAT SAIL THE SEAS."

"ROOS." Of course I chanted with them. I would defy anyone standing there to not roar their approval.

"And if today should be our day." Svein said, quieter. "Then at least we die with HONOUR."

"ROOS."

"WITH COURAGE."

"ROOS."

"WITH BLADES IN OUR HANDS."

"ROOS."

"AND FRIENDS AT OUR SIDES."

"ROOS."

There was another pause as Svein turned to look at the shore. There were harpies circling and more rising to meet them.

"Well lads," Svein went on. "It would seem that we're expected. Proud of you boys." He grinned. "Vilka är vi?" He asked.

"VAG ORM," They yelled back.

"Vilka ar vi?" He asked again.

"VAG ORM," I have no idea what it meant but I bellowed along with them.

"VILKA AR VI?" He asked again."

"VAG ORM."

Then Svein held his arms aloft and we roared until the heavens themselves shook with the thunder.

"BRACE." Ciri called, Helfdan's voice with it.

And we hit the sand.

And we did so hard. I don't know why I had expected anything different. I had beached in the Wave-Serpent before but this seemed to have something extra. Normally the Wave-Serpent is beached with the bare minimum of coverage. She is driven ashore enough so that the crossing tides in the coves and beaches that we use don't tear her apart. But also it's a balancing act because sooner or later the ship needs to go back out to sea and it's preferable that we are able to do that with the minimum effort possible.

But this time we went on hard. I staggered, again, catching hold of a rope to keep myself from falling over the side. The only difference between the fates was that this time I would break my own fool neck rather than drowning or freezing to death.

Then the Wave-Serpent roared again. But this was somehow louder, more primal and with much more fear and anger in it. It was as though the ship and the crew itself were one being and I felt myself being swept up into the madness of it.

Svein alone seemed to keep his head. Like a huge priest and Lord of battle he was snapping orders, physically taking hold of men and pushing them where he needed them to go.

I know that Ursa was the first man off the ship. Huge and solid in his armour with the Bear's head on top of his helm, huge shield raised, Sigurd went over the other side charging forward, those two men as the bulwark against assault and the other men followed. Haakon and Ivar were next with their axe and Club swinging respectively followed by more and more as we charged down the ship and leapt over the side.

I still wasn't on the beach and I was already out of breath with all the screaming. I had been pushed back and pushed back with the shield men and hardened warriors going first.

One man looked at me, saw my face and laughed. He said something that I did not recognise and then he leapt over the side himself.

Kerrass was in front of me and he went over and I knew that it was my turn next.

I was terrified. I tried not to think about the cold sand or the cold water that waited for me below. Nor did I think about the very real possibilities of twisting my ankle or breaking my leg or something. I just jumped. One hand holding my spear and the other used to help me vault over the side.

The moment of terror as I fell before the awful impact. But the impact was not as bad as what came next. Then there was the cold of the water as it splashed over my boots. I was no more than ankle deep. Knee deep with a swell but the pain was awful. It was as though my feet and legs were gripped in a vice. But that pain gave me an energy.

Because then it made me angry.

The Harpies were already screaming and we saw a group of them flying towards us, the front most of them already dipping to attack the men already on the beach. A man, I have no idea who it was although they carried a shield so I know it wasn't Kerrass, grabbed me and propelled me roughly towards where the rest of the men were getting into their formation. They had formed a Wedge in the sand with shields on the outside. I was thrown into the back of the formation where I found Kerrass and those men that didn't normally carry shields. I saw Perrin there, ducking and weaving like a fist fighter, poking his head out of cover looking for a target. Like lightening I saw him draw, knock an arrow before firing it at some target.

Rickard would have disapproved of his form but I saw a harpy fall from the formation.

Perrin was not alone and other arrows started to fly and the group of harpies fell back.

Then we were moving. Up the beach and away from the spray.

"CLOSE UP." Svein roared over the din. His voice distorted and rough. Other men took up the cry and we were pushed closer together.

"CLOSE THOSE GAPS." Svein roared again.

I could no longer see. Men were putting shields over our heads. Helfdan was behind me, Ciri and Kerrass were there.

"Here they come." Someone called.

"HALT. I SAID HALT, DAMN YOU." Svein bellowed. I could hear a sound like rain on a tent roof and the rushing of wind. We stumbled to a halt. I was cold, tired and I wanted to hit something. Ciri turned to me grinned with a wild look in her eyes. Not for the first time I thought of those stories of her as the mad, blood crazed terror of the Nilfgaardian roads when she had gone by the name of Falka.

"CLOSE UP."

Kerrass forced his way through the formation to peek between the gaps of shields. Svein swapped places with him to check on what was going on at the rear and to tug men into place. I felt, rather than heard, Kerrass' voice.

"That's a lot of harpies." He muttered to himself.

"BRACE." Not Svein's voice this time. Similar though and I wondered what it meant but then I saw the warriors, putting their shoulders to the shields, spreading their legs wider. Their expressions grim.

"BRACE."

I've never heard a sound like it. Not ever. I know that occasionally I am given to the over use of superlatives but I have never heard a sound like it. I've been sat here trying to think of what it was like so that I cup put the terms across in ways so that my readers can quite come to understand the awesome and terrible impact of that noise and about how it echoes in nightmares. But it was like nothing else.

It was the sound of harpies hitting shields. I have no idea how many Harpies. But there were thirty men of the crew and it felt like hundreds. Our formation was tiny. It was as though some giant hand had crafted the harpies into a spear and hurled it at us. Some harpies just flew at us as hard as they could. Others landed on sheilds and started to tug at them in an effort to disrupt the formation.

Ciri was laughing. She had drawn the crossbow that I had given her in a much more civilised place and shot out one of the gaps that was opened. Then she spun and fired through another gap.

"Goddess, but I've missed this." She told me as she knelt to begin reloading the bow.

Kerrass was doing a similar thing with his silver sword. A gap would form and he would thrust. Lightening fast. He had taken a potion, his skin paler than normal but his movements were so quick as to barely be visible.

Others were following their example. But the weapons had been prepared for giants and we might as well have just been giving them a rather nasty shove.

The noise was unbelievable. Painful even, at the sound of claws dragging across metal rims and the tearing of wood.

We couldn't last. Heroes though we were. Every single one of us. Our luck had to change and it began to. One man thrust his spear out through a hole and a harpy grabbed the spear and pulled. Out of reflex and sheer training, the warrior did his best to hold onto the weapon when the best thing to do was very probably to let go. Instead, he was lifted up to crash into the shields over head, opening up the top of the formation. By the time he realised was happening he was already out of formation and flying away. He dropped and we heard screaming for a long time.

Another man got physically pulled by the shield. Harpies have hook like claws and one man was unfortunate enough to have had a harpy grab hold of his shield and begin to pull. Just sheer brute force as they tried to pull him off his feet. He was strapped into his shield. A loose shield is a gap that an enemy can exploit and so those shield straps were held on tightly. And he was pulled out.

Realising what was happening he dropped his axe and drew a dagger in an effort to cut himself free. But to no avail. He was already off balance and that gap meant that more of the flying, screeching horrors could get a hold. He was pulled out of the group and the harpies started to tear him apart.

But we couldn't move. Pressed in on all sides by sheer weight of numbers. A storm of claws and teeth and wings battering away at our defences.

But then the other ships arrived as the harpies attacked us, the two ships that Finnvald had brought beached with their warriors dismounting and the Skelligan arrows started to fly.

It was like a great hand had been conjured up and swept our enemies out of the way. The release of pressure was incredible.

"Follow me lads." The formation broke and we were running. Men stamping on the heads or properly leaning on the bodies of fallen Harpies as we moved towards the cave that was our target. We had come in off centre and needed to run along the beach a bit before we could start to move in along the gully that would lead to the opening.

We could see the Harpies in a great black cloud against the grey sky. As I looked, I realised that it was raining and wondered, in that small part of me that is always horrified at the need for violence, how long it had been since we disembarked from the Wave-Serpent.

The swarm of Harpies was like a vast cloud if insects. The kind of thing that you see over the corn fields in the distance before the birds descend upon them. Or hovering above the lake in the evening. The cloud bulged and rippled. I thought I could see Siryn's in the midst of the cloud as well. At first there was a bulge that was heading for the archers who were moving up the beach now in order to support us in the combat that we were expecting.

But some will held them back. They rippled, pulled back and then they spun and dived towards us again. A great arrow of massed, writing tails and wings, led by a huge Siryn with her lizard eyes wide and teeth bare.

This time we met them in a wall. The shields formed in front of me and I was pushed back. Instead, I found a hole and pushed my spear through, standing on the end to brace against the impact.

The arrow of monsters shook as the arrows of our allies ripped into their flanks sending them tumbling out of the sky. Just the impact was enough to send them tumbling, even if the non-silver arrows actually did no damage at all, it was still enough to send the flying creatures tumbling out of the sky.

So it was a reduced attack that came at us this time, Kerrass stepped out and around the wall, Ciri was with him. They lifted their crossbows and fired at the huge Siryn that led the attack. They must have hit because the awful creature just plummeted down face first into the sand and loose pebbles, her inertia gouging a furrow into the dirt.

Ciri vanished in a green flash and reappeared over the things body, her sword flashing and the head came clear. Kerrass had reloaded his bow and shot down another Harpy that was diving to attack the Empress before she vanished again to stand next to the Witcher who drew his own silver sword that flashed.

Then the pair of them started to move, swords cutting patterns in the sky. Bewildering, dizzying in their brilliance and I started to see bits of monster fall away from them.

But then I had no time left as I had to start worrying for our own survival as although the arrow of harpies had been blunted, it had become a fist that struck us plum in the middle.

I felt an impact on my spear and had to fight to keep it upright. But the swarm was less organised now and if they had been human opponents I would have said that they were tiring.

The attacks were less organised now. Small groups of harpies were breaking off from the greater swarm and darting this way and that way. If a greater consciousness was indeed controlling them, then I would have been forced to guess that that consciousness was now asleep, or dead. I hoped that it was dead.

It felt like a respite and I was suddenly really tired, the urge to lean on my spear was too much for me to overcome. My feet felt as though they were made of metal and I was sucking air into my lungs enough to make my throat burn. Svein ordered a rotation of the shields. That we should take on some water and food if we could.

"Drink." Someone ordered, passing my a water skin. "It helps." I looked up into Helfdan's face. The bastard wasn't even breathing that hard, chewing on a piece of meat. "You once wrote that you've never been in a big battle before, is that still the case?"

I thought about it, taking huge, gulping breaths between small swallows. I mistimed it and started coughing and was forced to nod.

"Fights," I spluttered, "Skirmishes. Nothing that would fulfil the term "Battle" in my head."

The water really was helping and I was thirsty.

"So how are you finding your first one then." He helped me back to my feet. I couldn't remember sitting down.

"Is this a battle?"

He thought about that for a moment, ignoring the harpies that were still flapping around overhead.

"I think so. Nearly a hundred people on our side. Several hundred on theirs. So far. Sounds like a battle to me."

"There doesn't seem enough people to be a battle."

"You continental types. You think of things like "Sodden" and "Brenna" as being battles. Thousands of men and women on each side. But the truth is that you don't need that many people for a battle. We planned this, we executed a plan and now we will follow through on it."

He was looking off to one side as he said all of this. I followed his line of sight and saw that he was looking at that place on the beach where Finnvald's banner was flying.

Yes, he had a banner.

Helfdan did not bother with one. I suspect that this says something about both men but for the life of me I could not tell you what that something is. Some kind of peculiarity to Skelligans I suspect. There is also a small part of me that remembers Ciri's statement in the halls of Toussaint. That being that in that time and place, if you needed to ask which person was the Empress, then you were in the wrong place.

Or Svein had told Helfdan not to have one. That such a thing would make him a target.

I don't know but he was watching the other other men, frowning slightly. Then he turned and nodded at Svein.

"Come on then lads." Svein called. "Honour and Glory are not won resting on our heels. We have Giants to see."

From somewhere I found the strength to lift up a foot and place it in front of another. Then I could take another step and another and another until I was running behind the Shield Wall.

Perrin and Kar had gone running ahead to scout while the rest of us had taken a break. I had not truly appreciated how fast those two men could move until I noticed them running back to us. They moved as a pair, same as how I had once seen Sir Rickard's bastards move. The one checking while the other moved. But this seemed more instinctual and less trained into them.

Perrin would shoot a Harpy out of the sky and Kar would run over and drive one of his short swords into the body of the thing. It astonished me that they did not get attacked more often but they made use of the cover, darting from pile of Harpy corpses to pile of corpses.

I saw Perrin crouch next to a corpse and shoot a Diving Harpy before putting his boot on the corpse next to him, pulling an arrow free and then shooting that at a Harpy that was diving towards Kar's exposed back.

The shield wall opened to allow the two men in. I felt a little better at the state of Kar who was obviously struggling with the exertion.

"I'm getting too old for this," the pale, thin man complained.

"You're younger than me," Svein pointed out as he came over, Kerrass and Ciri with him.

"We found the cave." Perrin wasn't out of breath and he spoke with a thick accent that I had to work to understand. He was counting his arrows as he spoke. "Group of trolls milling about in the entranceway. Covered in ice they were."

Ciri winced.

"Small things with them, would have taken them for dogs except these things are all icy as well." Having counted his arrows, Perrin's hands automatically found his pouch and jammed some tobacco into his mouth before he started chewing.

"Any sign of the giants?" Helfdan wanted to know.

Kar shook his head. "No. We couldn't get close enough to see." He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. "The rocks form a gully which we're going to have to go into the entranceway."

"Any way we could go over the side of the gully?" Svein wanted to know.

"Not unless you're a better climber than me." Kar told him. "You can feel it getting colder the closer you get to the cave." He shuddered, "The rocks are slick with ice."

"And those hounds are easily able to climb over them." Kerrass told us. He and Ciri had begun conferring when Perrin started talking about the ice trolls.

"What are they?" Helfdan wanted to know.

"Hounds of the hunt." Ciri told him.

Helfdan flinched as she spoke. It would seem that he still wasn't entirely over whatever problem he had with her, despite the sailing lesson.

"Remember when the Wraiths of Morhogg attacked Skellige?"

"How could we forget?" Svein answered with a touch of asperity. "Nilfgaard was about to invade and then suddenly we were joining forces."

"Well..."

"Cut it short Swallow." Kerrass was holding onto his medallion. "We are not going to be free from attack for long."

"Conjunction of spheres," Ciri rattled off quickly. "Opened portals, Realm of Frost nearby, monsters affiliated with cold came through."

"Which monsters?"

"Lots of monsters."

"Well..." Helfdan frowned in confusion. "We still hit them as hard as we can right?"

"Pretty much." Ciri smiled at him.

"Then I don't understand the problem." Helfdan visibly tossed the problem aside.

"HOUNDS." Someone yelled.

"Brace the wall." Svein pushed his way back towards the front of his men. "Spears."

"Come on Freddie," Kerrass tugged me by the shoulder. "That means you."

Once again I found myself pushing my spear through a gap in the shields. A lower one this time, more aimed at the smaller hounds that we were expecting. I had time for a small glimpse through one of the gaps higher up to see what we were facing.

I thought that calling them Hounds was a bit ambitious. They were lumbering... things. Yes they had four legs and ran across the ground in the same way that dogs, wolves or whatever do. But that was where the similarity stopped for me. They looked as though they were scaled at this distance with large spikes all over them where I couldn't tell if they were spines or thick hair or if they really were just spikes, standing out from the body. I could see that waves of cold vapour billowed out from their mouths and rolled off their flanks and their shoulders.

But truth be told, I was more interested in the trolls that followed them.

They looked like trolls, they moved like trolls but instead of having rocky protrusions sticking out of their backs and faces. These things had lumps, spikes really, of ice. They had the same thing going on, of their breath seeming like ice crystals forming in the air and although I knew it was my imagination. I could feel myself getting colder just looking at them. Their clubs were nothing more than large icicles that looked as though they had been pulled from the lips of a cliff. Huge, white things. How could they possibly survive the first impact?

I looked back. Finnvald and his men were still shooting at the swarming Harpys and were getting increasingly tied up by them. I wanted the safety in numbers and I found the sudden and utterly foolish urge to run across the open ground littered with the corpses of the Harpies that had been killed as well as one or two bodies of men who had been lifted into the air and torn apart by the flying monstrocities. There was no chance at all that I would make it. But on the other hand, I wanted the protection of those extra bodies so badly that I could almost taste it.

I took a deep breath and braced my spear.

"All right, here they come." Svein called.

"The hounds are here to break our line." Kerrass told us all, carefully and clearly, making sure that we heard every word. "They will try and force their way through and force gaps in our line so that we will turn and face them. Make no mistake. This is a ruse designed to scatter us ready for the trolls to hit us. The giants will come after that."

"I thought we were supposed to be talking to the giants." Someone joked to a bit of laughter. It was probably Kar."

"Then they saw your face Kar." Haakon joked. The tall man had a wicked sense of humour when he decided to employ it. "They saw your face and decided that that alone was worth an attack."

"That'll do now lads." Svein was leaning against the backs of some shields and had his eye to the gap. "BRACE."

This was a different noise to when the Harpy's attacked. It was heavier and wetter in some way than before. Certainly there was a deeper weight behind it. One man tumbled backwards. I have no idea why he was sent flying and no-one else was although I suppose he might not have braced his shield properly. A Hound came through the hole after him before Ciri appeared between the hound and it's target, fairly decapitating the thing. The man climbed to his feet and limped back into line.

I thrust forward with my spear using the short powerful thrusts that I had learnt all that time ago. Sometimes it seemed to bite deep and other times it didn't.

"And STEP." Svein ordered

It seemed impossible to me that the shield wall was expected to move forward into the mass of freezing monsters. But the men of the Wave-serpent, and not for the first time, did the impossible, pushing forward.

More than one Hound was pushed backwards, some still screaming and trying to lash out at the men climbing over them. I saw a warrior lean down and lean on a sword to a spray of white blood.

"And STEP." Then we did it again. I realised that I was falling behind, so aghast at what was happening that I had frozen in place. A harpy dived at me and I dove out of the way. As I came to my feet, Ciri was there, already pulling her sword from the body of the creature that had come close enough to me that I could smell it's putrid breath.

"Keep up." She called before running off. She and Kerrass were keeping up a running Skirmish behind and to the sides of the moving shield-wall. Any creature that managed to leap over the shields, or loop around the sides were quickly met with the flashing sword of a Witcher and an Empress. Kerrass was grim as he worked. His face an emotionless mask while Ciri wore a strange, hungry expression, half grin and half snarl. I shuddered and ran to join them.

I was feeling more than a little overwhelmed and outclassed. It was all getting a bit too much. I reached for some kind of anger. A rage that would help focus me and keep me going. But I couldn't find it. I was just terrified, stamping forward whenever Svein called and lunging with my spear when there was a space.

But the trolls were coming.

I could feel the ground shaking as they came, rumbling footsteps and the air whistling as they waved their impossible, icy clubs above their heads.

"Let them through," Svein called and our line parted before the first troll that came into our line. The swinging club meeting nothing but air as it missed Ivar's head by a matter if inches.

I sometimes think as though it would be an interesting study to study the mind. To study the way that the brain works. Specifically my brain. A good man, a friend of mine had nearly had his skull caved in. I had ducked myself despite the fact that I had been well out of reach of any kind of danger. People were shouting and screaming, one of whom might even have been me, there was the sound of metal on stone, metal on flesh and even metal on metal although I suspect that that was just metal on ice.

I had run forward after the troll that had passed us with it's makeshift club whistling overhead, my plan was to get a nice firm lunge into the back of the knee, a move that I had used before when fighting rabid trolls with Kerrass in Southern Kaedwen. I would barely hurt it but bipedal things with knees and elbows all work the same. If you put something sharp, with enough force in the part of the joint that bends, then the entire section will collapse in protest. That way, those men who had the power and the skill (ie Kerrass) would be able to step in and to the proper amount of damage to the creature.

And that's precisely my point.

All the way through the entire thing. My brain was watching what was happening and offering a strange kind of commentary on what was happening and that is just one example. As the troll passed me I remembered those early lessons from Kerrass and strode forward to do my own bit to try and help. I remember that detached part of my brain commenting on the body mechanics of the way bipedal creatures work.

Occasionally, I still get notes from the university which try and tell me that I have strayed too far from the academic purpose of these essays so here is a point on that regard.

Indeed, I have recently sent off a paper to the university press on this very subject if you are that interested in it.

For all that the creatures of the continent have many differences, and they do, there are some things that are always the same. One of those things is the presence of Elbows, Shoulders and knees. If you can see a creature with these things then you can expect them to move in certain ways.

That's not to say that you can be complacent. Strength, agility and intelligence are all varying factors but there are some things that always remain the same. For example, legs have to bend before a jump. An elbow cannot go too far in the opposite direction, the body simply won't allow it. The same with knees. Which means that the proper application of pressure to these joints and limbs will cause even the strongest creature to fall to their knees.

This can be useful in combat in many different ways. One of those ways is that it doesn't matter how big or how heavily armoured you are. If someone takes a fucking great warhammer and smashes it into the side of your knee then your knee will shatter. Even if you survive the fight, then you are never walking again.

Barring magical intervention of course.

The same goes for a blow to the back of the knee. If you force an impact into a joint, forcing it in the direction that it is supposed to bend. Then the chances are good that it will bend against the will of the owner of the joint.

Which was what I was trying to do here.

But that wasn't the entire thing that my brain was noticing.

I finally learned the difference between a battle and a fight.

Some time ago I had commented, both by myself and in conversation with Sam, that there can be joy in a fight. When the cause is just. When you have been all pent up for so long with fear or anticipation. When you know that your cause is just or at least, that you utterly agree with the cause, then that explosion of fear and anticipation into the sudden physical exertion as well as the ability to finally pour all of that pent up feeling onto the people that are trying to kill you.

As well as that feeling that you get when you are close to death, where life seems so much sweeter. There is joy in that.

Sam told me, when I talked to him about it sometime later, that he agreed. But that such a feeling did not exist in a battle and in that moment I understood why.

There is no time for joy.

On a surface level this is because battles last far longer than a fight. The longest fight that I have ever been involved in was the running fight with Jack around Toussaint. But try as I might, I can't call that a battle. After that, I suppose that we would have to call the running series of fights against the Cult of the First-Born. But those were definitely fights. We were fighting for our survival and the sweetness of life in those moments was almost unbearable. You could even call it a struggle rather than a fight. A struggle where I was constantly astonished to find that I was still alive and ended with us winning, but not beating the enemy.

I remembered weeping like a baby after surviving that. I still do sometimes when I wake up having had a nightmare about the mist coming down off the mountains.

I think that there are two differences between a fight and a battle. The first is the level of organisation that goes into a battle. Fights are over in seconds, at most minutes. The thing with Jack was an outlier. The fight in Angraal against the forces of Fuck-face was over in a minute. Whereas we had already been fighting for a couple of hours. We had had time to stop, have a rest, something to eat and drink for crying out loud. It is impossible to maintain that combat feeling in those kinds of situations. In a fight, it's an all or nothing scramble for survival. But in a battle, you are aware that your strength and energy are finite resources that need to be conserved and properly directed into the correct channels.

The other thing that makes difference between a battle and a fight is the level of organised chaos that goes into a battle. Constantly worrying about where the enemy is. Where are we standing. What are we standing on. Who we are fighting. What do we know. What can we see.

The thing about a fight is that I knew who my enemy was. Where they were and what I wanted to do about it. In a battle, you have to be constantly looking around yourself in an effort to try and preserve yourself. Where is the enemy. What are they doing? That crowd of creatures that was running away, was it pretending and is now on it's way back. Has it changed it's mind and is now returning after gathering up it's courage. That hill over there, are there a group of archers behind it? A group of cavalry? In this case, is that where the giants are hiding, ready to rain down rocks, trees and bits of ice on top of us.

That's what the difference in is a battle. It's almost as though a battle is actually a series of fights against a series of individual opponents. But you have to treat it as one big fight against all of the different things. Just thinking about it now was exhausting.

I came to this realisation the hard way. As I ran in to plant the blade of my spear into the back of a troll's knee I was abruptly tugged from my feet and thrown to the ground, the impact driving the air from my lungs. A fraction of a heartbeat later, as I lay on my back desperately trying to recover my breath as well as looking around for a threat...

Write this down. In a fight, the floor is never ever your friend.

But as I was doing all of these things, I literally felt the cold from the passage of the Troll's club over the space where I would have been standing. I turned, to see the warrior who had knocked me from my feet yelling at me through a mask of snow, sand and blood. I had no idea what he was screaming. Probably something to do with "Watch your back you stupid fucker." But I didn't take it in. Because I saw the Hound running towards the man's back.

Long lessons with Kerrass had taught me that I never ever let go of my spear. Even now, even if I'm as safe as I can possibly be and I know that if something is there to attack me then we have bigger problems to worry about, if someone drops something or there's a sudden noise or when people clap me on the shoulder when I'm not expecting them. Whenever this happens, I have an involuntary spasm where my hands tighten as if to desperately keep my grip on my weapons.

This is sometimes entertaining to Kerrass whenever I happen to be holding onto a food item. A chicken leg for instance.

So I rolled, scrambled to get my feet under me, bent before using what little strength I could summon so that I could leap forward, burying my spear into the flanks of the hound. The teeth and the jaws of the beast missed my saviour by the width of a finger. He realised what was happening and pulled a short axe from his belt and buried the head of his axe into the beast.

I got my feet back unto me and used the spear as a lever to almost lift it onto it's side. The warrior pulled his axe free and struck again. And again.

And again.

Pretty sure the beast was already dead by the time of the last strike but hey, if it made him feel better. I placed my boot on the side and tugged my spear free with a tug. The warrior clapped me on the shoulder with what I thought was a grin and gestured towards one of the nearby trolls with a head movement that was a universal gesture of "Shall we?"

I nodded a response which I hoped stood for "why not?"

We ran, him leading with his axe held high.

Right into the swinging club of that same troll. He screamed as he flew through the air although with the impact of that club, the sheer force of that alone must have killed him.

It was only by a miracle that that same swing missed me, a miracle or a lack of physical conditioning on my part as if I had been running any faster then I would have been much closer to the warrior in question and much more likely to be struck. As it was, I was now inside the things reach and thrust my spear up and into it's softer gut. I was not alone either, I saw two of Perrin's arrows already sunk into the things softer belly and as I thrust, another bounced off the things chest. Another man was with me with his own spear, aiming further up for a throat. Another man got even closer and plunged his dagger into the things belly before ripping it along in an effort to disembowel the beast.

If this had been a fight, it would have been over then with the thing beginning it's painful and slow process of changing from being a living and breathing thing, into being a dead thing.

But it was not a fight. It was a battle and I had already learned the lesson that it was impossible to remain safe and to stand still at the same time.

So I used the first movement that Kerrass ever taught me with the spear. I twisted and pulled the spear out and I was already running. Looking for Kerrass, Helfdan or Svein, anyone really. I knew where Ciri was, you could tell by the occasional green flashes as she teleported around the battlefield.

From somewhere, possibly having finally drawn blood, I found a second wind and ran at the back of a troll that was swinging his club at the two or three men in front of him that were trying to get at his soft underbelly. Another man was trying to bash away at the things hardened, craggy back with his axe. Again, I have no idea who it was but he just had time to realise the futility of his actions when I got there.

I ducked under and thrust my dagger into the things groin, aiming for where the femoral artery would be in a human.

I was successful although not in the way I wanted. The thing bellowed in agony as I hit something that would make any man wince in pain and bent down to look and see what had caused the pain. As he couldn't see me, he spun, still bending down which meant that the axeman had a clear swing at the things face.

Which is just as well as the next thing that would have happened would have been that the troll stood on me.

Then I felt the ground begin to shake.

I mean really shake. Not just with the coming of the Ice trolls, but to really fucking shake.

Shaking enough that I could barely keep my feet.

My memory of the next few moments is a little hazy. I saw two things, one after the other. But which one came first? I have no idea. So what I'm going to do is to just tell you what the two things were.

For the first time, I saw an Ice Giant. Some people call them Frost Giants but I always think that that makes them seem a little lighter and more cuddly than they actually are. I can tell you that they are certainly not made of ice. Nor is their blood made from ice water. It is light in colour and I suspect that it is this that, at least partially gives them their skin tone of light, very pale blue.

Like all other anthropoids of their type, they have two arms, two legs, hair on their head and face which is black and although they are extremely gangly, as though their arms and legs are too long for their bodies, they are also grotesquely muscled. Their bodies are a solid mass of muscle.

By "grotesquely muscled" I mean that these things had muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles that seemed as though they were out of balance. As though the wrong groups of muscles had been enlarged during some form of training.

Kerrass has a lot to say on the matter of training. He would argue that all things need to be exercised, or trained, in balance. This means that no one one set of muscles out grows another set of muscles and it has to be said, other people who know about this kind of thing have agreed with him. Sometimes there are factors that mean that some folk are more muscled than others. You see knights that are built like triangles. Huge shoulder, chest and arm muscles before they taper down to a relatively slim waist and lean legs. This is because they carry the wait of a lot of that armour on their shoulders and upper bodies, while still being required to swing heavy weapons about. Whereas their legs only need to be strong enough to get the knight into the saddle and to survive the same knight's dismount.

And many knights use cranes or mounting blocks to do that same thing. Or travel with a large number of squires in order to lift them into the saddle.

So when I saw an Ice giant, I thought of a body builder. One of the circus or festival strongmen that lift heavy barrels above their heads and wrestle in over the top bouts of athleticism for the entertainment of children and those adults who want to remember what it was like to believe in heroes and villains.

But then if you can imagine those people, then imagine them if they have certain muscles that have been amplified much more than they should have been. A thin shoulder followed by a massive, corded set of forearm muscles. On a body where the head seems too small to support such massive limbs.

Ooooh, I know. Imagine a man who has one side of his chest fully developed, but where the other side of the chest is underdeveloped. And the same person has one half of his abs but not the other. All the while, massive veins stick out of the flesh everywhere.

I remember having just a moment of disappointment when I saw the giants. I don't know what I had pictured when I had first heard the terms "Frost Giants" and "Ice Giants". But I do know that that part of my imagination that was still twelve years old was bitterly disappointed by what turned up to attack us that day.

I was disappointed with how small they were. I wanted them to be huge creatures. Twenty, thirty feet tall. Comparable with mountains in size, towering above treetops as they came.

They weren't that tall. Part of the fact was that they seemed to shamble along in a kind of stoop which made them seem that much shorter.

The rational part of my brain would like to say that they were still massively tall and easily towered over us. Well over twelve to Eighteen foot tall they moved with a strange lolloping shamble. Again, I have to suppose that this is a side effect of the lack of balance in their musculature and the slightly malformed nature of their skeletons.

So that was one of the two things that I saw. Three giants, charging across the sand towards us. Their extremities protected with bits of driftwood tied together. They looked primitive but I supposed that they would be more than effective when it came to actually defending themselves. So I firmly reminded myself of Kerrass' old mantra. That just because something looks stupid, or sounds stupid, then that doesn't mean that it actually is stupid. It's true for the opposite too. Some of the most educated people that I know are dumber than pig dribble.

If this entire battle was actually done with the thought and will of the Ice Giants behind it, then that would certainly prove the point.

The other thing that I saw, oddly, was the thing that really sent ice down my veins. Finnvald and his men were retreating.

No, that's the wrong word. "Retreating" suggests some kind of flight. Of running away. Of fleeing before an overwhelming enemy. Someone who is retreating might be doing so in good order, facing the enemy so as not to be overwhelmed. It might be something tactical...

This was almost certainly something tactical, just not about this particular battlefield.

… Or it might be something uncontrolled. With men throwing down their weapons, casting aside shields and bits of armour in order that their limbs might be able to move that little bit faster.

These men seemed a little calm for all of that.

Also, I could see more than a few of them trying to push the Wave-Serpent out to sea while the rest of their fellows were climbing aboard their own vessels. It would seem that Ciri and Helfdan had driven the Wave-Serpent too far onto the beach for this to work though as the ship wasn't moving. Instead, the half a dozen warriors that were trying this, took axes to the hull while one of them lit a few torches that were thrown into the deck.

Regardless of any of these things. Finnvald's men were no longer covering us with arrow fire. Instead, the only arrows that were being fired were used to keep the harpies and the rest off their own selves. Those creatures that were attacking them rather than us.

It is a strange moment when you realise that "We" has turned into "Them" and "Us." It is not a pleasant sensation.

I ran. Frantically looking for someone, anyone that might be able to change what was happening. I felt the noose tightening around our necks. I felt sure that this was it. That we would be losing, that we were about to be stomped flat by giants, squished by the clubs of trolls and carried off to be food for the harpies in their nests. And that wasn't including what was going on with the hounds. My fear was palpable and clawing at my throat.

I ran. It's a miracle that I survived the entire process if we're being honest with each other. A miracle. As it was, I batted away a Harpy attack with the business end of a spear, I have no idea how much damage I did. I ducked under the swing of an Ice troll, the swing quickly followed up by a pair of Warriors. I finally saw Helfdan. He was levering his shorter, hatchet sized axe from the fallen body of a troll.

He looked up as I approached.

The bastard wasn't even breathing hard.

"Finnvald and his men are leaving." I told him between heaving breaths.

"Oh?" He turned and looked. "So they are."

I stared at him as he watched Finnvald's people climb aboard their ships and push off. He seemed to take a long time over it. "Ah well." He turned back to the fighting, took a deep breath and bellowed in a shout that sent my ears ringing. In that moment, it seemed impossible that so much noise could come from the throat of a human being.

"SVEIN."

I shouldn't have been surprised. In the same way that Svein's voice is raspy and harsh due to him needing to be heard over the clamour and noise of a battlefield. Helfdan's voice needed to be heard over the crash of a storm.

So summoned, Svein was coming out of the melee. Kerrass was with him, Svein had taken a gash across his arm from something and had a cloth pressed up against it.

Helfdan frowned when he saw it.

"You alright?" He asked Svein.

"Just about. Bastard swooped down at me. Only just caught the evil flappy bastard on my shield didn't I."

"Getting careless." Helfdan chided gently.

"Too old for it. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You could do with letting me train a replacement."

"You just want a season off so that you can try and get Yngvild pregnant again."

"Not an unfair criticism." Svein admitted.

I was staring at them openmouthed. As they joked, our so called allies were taking to ship and fleeing. Leaving our own ship damaged and all the time, our enemies were getting stronger and closer.

Kerrass clapped me on the shoulder. "Still alive Freddie."

"More by luck than design. What the fuck is..." But Kerrass waved me to silence.

"The giants are coming." Helfdan told Svein.

"I knew that, hard to miss the fuckers..."

"But did you know that Finnvald is leaving?" Helfdan smiled as he said that. As though a great joke was being played.

"Is he?" Svein looked. "So he is, the slimy little fucker."

I felt my mouth fall open. "Is this the time for..." I wanted to ask them why they were making jokes but Kerrass stopped me.

"Disappointing." Helfdan mused. "But not entirely unexpected."

"Wait," I wanted to know. "You expected that?"

"Of course."

"Gentlemen... Might I remind you... Giants." Kerrass smiled faintly.

Svein and Helfdan looked at each other. "Man has a point." Svein said.

Kerrass spun and shot a Harpy out of the sky. I hadn't noticed it.

"So what do you reckon?" Svein asked Helfdan, I thought I saw what was happening then. I thought I could see just a glimpse of what was going on beneath the mask of the two men. Both of them knew the answer. I was reminded, not for the first time during my association with the men of the Wave-Serpent, of Sir Rickard and the Bastards. In the same way that Rickard presented a face towards his men, these men were doing the same. Our allies were retreating, leaving us to die. They had either betrayed us, which the attack on the Wave-Serpent suggested. Or they had just given up.

That retreat meant that the Harpies, which were currently wheeling and milling around, would soon be free to attack us again. The hounds and the Trolls were still in amongst the remainder of the Wave-Serpent's crew and the Giants were just about to smash into the same melee.

This was it. This was the moment where the tide turned and our run of good luck deserted us. We would have to retreat back to the Wave-Serpent. Hope it was still sea worthy before finding another solution or, which was more likely, heading for port to weather out the passage of the Spectral ship and then moving on. Trying to bring political pressure to bear in order to get the information that we needed.

That I wanted.

For a moment there, part of me admitted that this was the easier path. That this was what we should be doing. It would be easier.

But another part of me rebelled. That was a defeat. The part of me that was a warrior, despite my own best efforts, rebelled at the idea.

But there was no way I could ask these men to risk their lives to get me the information that I wanted. It was so desperate and there was no way that we could win. This was it. It was all over.

"I dunno." Helfdan admitted before shrugging and grinning in a way that I had never seen on him before. It was a hungry smile. As though something had been unleashed. "I suppose that we charge."

"What?" I asked stupidly before my mouth hung open.

"Now we're fucking talking." Svein grinned savagely.