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

110. Chapter 110

(A/N: Contains some spoilers for Witcher 3. Also, some views expressed here reflect the attitudes and knowledge of the characters rather than the author. Thank you for reading)

Kerrass came to see me in the morning.

I was still getting ready to go. For some reason it was taking me a lot longer to gather my things than it would normally. I kind of want to put it down to having new bags and new belongings with unfamiliar shapes and sizes which meant that no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get them all into place in a way that I found satisfactory.

I was also tired. That bone aching, mind numbing place that exists beyond simple physical tiredness. The kind of thing where you spend time just looking at things and wondering what they are for and why they are in your hand in the first place. The state of mind where you are staring at a leg of chicken that you have already taken a bite out of and wondering why you are holding it. Or when you wander around looking for your travelling cloak before realising that you are already wearing it.

My day had still not ended after the Jarl meeting.

After the conference of the Jarls we had been taken back into the main hall so that we could have something to eat and so there could be a formal declaration about the mission would be setting off in the morning. The Queen stood on the dais and announced, in broad terms, what we had found out. She told us that the Skeleton Ship had been looking for something and thanks to the heroic efforts of the crew of the Wave-Serpent as well as the "noble Witcher, Lord Frederick and the Empress of Nilfgaard", we now knew what that thing was.

I did manage to spend a bit of time teasing Kerrass about the "noble Witcher" part.

She told the hall that the ship had been hunting for a person and that in the morning, Jarl Hjalmar of clan An Craite would be leaving to go and obtain this person. This, in an effort to ensure that this passage of the Skeleton Ship would be the last passage of the Skeleton Ship. She also directed Hjalmar that he should take the survivors of the Wave-Serpent with him as part of his expedition along with fifty of the Imperial Guard to help ensure that there would be no future attempts on the life of the Empress.

There were questions. I noticed that a number of men wearing the clan colours of clan Tuirseach were the primary question askers despite Jarl Ingiumnd folding his arms next to the dais and looking grumpy and including a very unhappy looking Lord Dreng. They wanted to know who this man was and where he was. The Queen didn't hide this knowledge, she was quite open and honest about the subject really, telling the crowd that the object of the Skeleton Ship's search was hiding with the Druids in their sanctuary and that that would be the final objective of Lord Hjalmar's mission.

Then someone asked what would happen if he had taken refuge with the druids and that the druids refused to give him up. Again, I thought that the Queen was very diplomatic when she told the assembly that she had every faith that wisdom would prevail and that the Druids would see the wisdom in handing over such a person for the Queen's judgement. She had made her voice hard as she said this last and I don't think that there were many people who had any doubt as to what the result would be.

She also announced the formation of a new clan. Thus distracting the assembly from the fact that she had just ordered her brother to invade the Druid's sanctuary, against their will if necessary and violating the traditional neutrality of the Druids. She went on to say that there would be a series of games and challenges that would be set by the Jarl's council in order to select who the new Jarl would be and that these tests would take place during the time of "The Thaw."

According to Svein the time immediately after the passage of the Skeleton Ship through the harbour of Kaer Trolde is called "The Thaw" as everyone, basically, has nothing to do other than to wait for the rest of the world to emerge from it's blanket of snow and ice so that life can get back to normal. It is generally supposed to last for a period of about a week, give or take a few days depending on the time of year.

Tradition states that this time is to be some kind of public holiday where people eat, drink and be merry. There were jokes that I heard being made that there was often some kind of population boom nine months after the Skeleton Ship disappears. I suppose that there is very little else to do other than to sit and watch the fire when you don't have books to read.

Knowing that we would be setting off early in the morning, I wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and sleep, as exhausted wasn't the word for it. Instead, Kerrass and Ciri ganged up on me and forced me to a bath and some hot food as well as an examination by a healer in order to check if I had suffered any frost bite during my travels.

The older man coldly informed me that I was lucky before admonishing me to take better care of myself in the future. The fact that we had been ambushed and that all of my belongings had been destroyed along with the Wave-Serpent was not seen as an adequate excuse by the healer for my condition. He was not alone in the brotherhood of healers and doctors in assuming that the rest of the world is terminally stupid, which it is, and that they are the only true holders of wisdom. Which they might be. Dr Shani sometimes has a similar attitude about herself when she is chastising her patients for doing stupid things.

After that, I had another go at contacting Ariadne, which failed, before I climbed into a bed and pulled the blankets up and over my head. I remember this movement. I remember pulling the blankets up and over myself but I don't remember much else.

I woke up, incredibly stiff, to find a thrall shaking me awake and telling me that it was time to wake up. Another thrall was rebuilding the fire in my room while a third was depositing bundles of clothing on the ground. The first thrall, who appeared to be in charge, told me that this was a gift from Lord Hjalmar and that it would keep me warm during the journey as well as a full set of cold weather gear to replace the stuff that I had lost. My old clothes, that I had worn since before the Wave-Serpent had died, had been taken away and presumably burnt in order to protect the world from the stench of my cold sweat.

The final blessing was that someone had given me a large drink of the hot drink that the islanders love. There are several varieties of tea in the world but the stuff that the islanders make is particularly lethal. Ivar had once joked to me that it's meant to be brewed strong. So strong that you can stand a wooden spoon up in it before you put the honey in to blunt the edge of the taste which he likens to a chisel up the nostril. It's a uniquely bitter brew and the islanders claim that they like it that way despite the fact that only a couple of them, that I ever saw, drank it without adding some cow or goat milk to it and adding a spoonful of honey.

One of these people was Helfdan.

Kerrass hated the stuff despite drinking it out of necessity. He would normally add a couple of spoonfuls of honey into any herbal drink that exists on the continent but in the case of this stuff, Kar had once teased him by asking if Kerrass wanted any tea in his honey. I normally prefer my tea a little more bitter than Kerrass does. Especially in the morning when I want it to scour the morning fuzz out of my mouth, but even I was having to double the amount of honey that I would have added to the stuff.

One of the benefits of it though is that it really does seem to wake you up that little bit faster. You can't stay asleep when you have a few mouthfulls of that stuff in you so I was grateful to those nameless thralls for bringing it to me. Food is always a communal experience in Skellige so I knew that breakfast would be served in the hall, but that Skelligan tea was needed. Plus, probably, a few more cups of the stuff before I was done.

But, although I was awake and the shock of the still chilly room meant that I had gotten dressed in the blessedly warm clothing with astonishing speed, the tea doesn't wake up your brain. Especially when you are already exhausted. So I was looking at my saddlebags which were the only things that I still had access to from my original gear. I had left them back at Kaer Trolde as I hadn't thought that I would need them with travelling by sea.

I was stood, suited and booted, looking at the saddlebags and all the stuff that was needing to go into the saddlebags. Then I had kind of frozen in space as I stared at the two things. It was oddly as though my brain was switching from one to the other saying "Stuff, Bags. Bags, Stuff. Stuff. Bags. Stuff needs to go into bags. Stuff. Bags". All without making the connection that I needed to be the one to put the stuff into the bags and that they weren't just going to get up and march into the bags by themselves before carefully arranging them for ease of carry, convenience of access and comfort to the horse. It just hadn't occurred to me. I was that kind of tired.

I was still stood there, looking down at my bed with the pile of orderly things that needed to be packed and trying to decide how I should set about doing these things when Kerrass knocked and entered the room.

"Freddie. We need to... Are you alright?"

"Hmmm? What?"

"I don't know but you've spent an awfully long time just standing and staring at the pile of stuff on your bed."

Something clicked inside my head and I started packing my meagre belongings. "Sorry Kerrass, it's just taking me a long time to wake up this morning."

"If it's any consolation." He said, sitting in the chair in the corner of the room. "You are not alone. The Empress was heard to be complaining, most bitterly, at the prospect of having to leave her, and I quote, "her pit" before a more suitable time."

I winced. "Did the offending Thrall survive?"

"It was actually Lord Voorhis that could be seen retreating down the corridor."

I chuckled at the thought before letting myself recognise the concern in Kerrass' eyes and became serious. "What's going on Kerrass?"

Kerrass took a deep breath. "I need you to start preparing yourself for something."

"What?" The arrangement of stuff wasn't all fitting inside the bags, so I was in the process of taking some out and refolding it in a futile effort to get more in.

"Freddie. Look at me."

I put the fur lined mittens down and turned.

"I need you to start preparing yourself for some disappointment." Kerrass told me. "I need you to start getting yourself into the head-space that Lennox is not going to tell us anything about your sister, or give us any clues on where to go next."

I sat down on the bed as I absorbed that. Then I blinked. "Sorry, my brain isn't fully working yet. What?"

Kerrass nodded to himself.

"Freddie, we're going to go and get him. We're going to go and break into the Druid's sanctuary one way or another right?"

I nodded.

"So what happens then? We demand Lennox's side of the story. Either on the spot or we drag him back to Kaer Trolde so that he can be judged by Queen Cerys and everyone else. Back here where he's going to plead. He's going to beg that he not be given to the Skeleton Ship. You with me so far?"

I nodded again.

"There is only one thing that he has to bargain with which is information. He can explain who he is. He can explain why he has done what he has done. He can give us all the reasons as to why he should not be consigned to the darkness of returning to his curse until that curse is played out in whatever way it will eventually play out. He will try to appeal to our morals. He will point out the fact that we are literally sacrificing him to this thing. We are putting the lives of the many people of Skellige above his own. Lets not try and kid ourselves that we are doing anything other than Human Sacrifice here.

"Jarl Udalryk was right when he said that being under the thrall of a curse is one of the worst things imaginable and we are consigning a man to that."

He stopped and tried to make eye contact with me. He failed.

"But he has one other thing up his sleeve." He told me. "One more trick that he can pull."

My tired brain finally caught up with what Kerrass was telling me. "He can say that he knows what happened to my sister and threaten to withhold that knowledge unless he is kept from the Skeleton Ship."

Kerrass leant back and I let the realisation sink in for a moment.

"There are things that we can try." Kerrass told me softly. "The man is a coward and is obviously not stupid. I'm no torturer but the threat of such things is often enough to convince a person to tell us what we need to know. If we had time, our options would open but the Skeleton Ship is days away from it's final passage so...

"We could steal him away." Kerrass suggested gently and without conviction. "You and me against Skellige and the might of the Imperial Guard on the islands, letting him loose on the continent after the Thaw. We would need to steal a boat to get him back to the continent after the ice had melted. It would be difficult but not impossible..."

I shook my head. "Skellige and the Empire would come for us. They would go after Emma and Sam and Mark and they would not be wrong to do so."

"I agree." Kerrass said slowly. I didn't look at him but I thought that he was watching me carefully, trying to guage my capacity for doing something stupid.

"He could be convinced." I tried but I knew that I was reaching. "Ciri, Ermion, the Queen... All of them could manage to get through to him."

"They might." Kerrass admitted. "But they won't. This is a man that has hidden for years. Hidden in plain sight. Every single person that has passed, including me, would have helped him if he had just come to us and asked them for help. But he didn't. He hid and protected himself. He's not going to tell you what you want to know out of the goodness of his heart. He's going to keep it until the last possible moment and then he will twist the knife. If he can't be free of his curse then he will see to it that you can't be free of his."

I considered.

A whole fantasy scenario spread out in front of me. Kerrass and I staging a daring rescue where we would kidnap the man Lennox, put a bag over his head and steal away to some remote part of the islands until the sea started to thaw. We would buy, or hire a boat to take us back to the mainland where we would hide from the wrath of the people that would be coming for us. Then, gradually we would earn the trust of Lennox so that he would tell us everything that we wanted to know. I would use that knowledge to rescue my sister and to buy my way back into favour with Ciri and then... and then...

"We can't do it can we." I said aloud.

"Can't do what Freddie."

I took a deep breath. "We have to see this through." I said. "We have to get him. I must accept that he's not going to tell me everything that I want to know. And when the time comes, he must be thrown to the ship in order to lift the curse from the Skelligan Islands. And I must live with that. I must know that I gave up the opportunity to find out something else so that the Skelligans can live free of the terror of the Skeleton Ship."

"We do." Kerrass agreed steadily, still watching me carefully. "I don't want to Freddie. Leaving aside the moral question of throwing a man back to a curse. I don't want to. I want to get you your answers. I've spent all night trying to think of ways that we could get this done. But over and over it comes back to this. We can't do that."

"I know." I stood up after taking a deep breath. "I need to pack." I told him.

"I will see you in the hall for breakfast." He replied.

I turned away, all pretence of order having left, I was jamming the clothes and goods into the saddlebags with angry gestures, forcing them inside until I could no longer see for the tears.

Kerrass put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed briefly before leaving.

After he left, I had a little weep to myself before putting a bit of time into repacking my bags before leaving the room and moving into the hall. A thrall took my bags off me and reassured me that they would be waiting for me on my horse when it was time to get going.

The group was in full swing by the time that I got there. It was still relatively early morning so the vast majority of the people in the hall were those people that would be coming with us. Hjalmar had chosen fifty of his finest warriors as his personal guard. Technically under the command of Gudavsson who had found himself back in favour since his actions the previous day. I have no idea what he had done to fall out of favour enough that he had been guarding the gate during the approach of the Skeleton Ship, but whatever that had been, it seemed as though he had been forgiven.

It seemed absurd to me that it had only been the previous day that we had made it back but I suppose that's what happens when massive events have you caught up in the midst of things.

Those fifty warriors were joined by another fifty members of the Imperial Guard who had personally been chosen by Lord Voorhis for their skills and unquestioned Loyalty.

Queen Cerys was there, still in the same clothes that she had been wearing the previous evening leading me to wonder if she had gotten any sleep at all. But she was full of smiles and jokes, exhorting her brother onto feats of action in the coming mission.

The burst of activity proved a welcome distraction from what Kerrass had told me earlier and I was able to put it out of my mind with a bit of ease the same way I used to dismiss the knowledge of how close the exams were getting. I was sat at the high table, between Ciri and Kerrass, opposite Helfdan on the other side of the table with Hjalmar opposite Ciri who were the pair closest to the Queen. Helfdan looked uncomfortable with all the noise and things and was doing that kind of eating... I don't know how else to describe it other than this. A man, who isn't hungry or thirsty, but knows that he needs to eat and drink. I have done much the same on mornings before those exams I mentioned earlier. He didn't look up as I sat down and arranged my spear next to me.

Although the Thrall had taken my bags, he had not taken my weapons. As we were setting out, we were all armed and armoured. As it was, there was a debate going on at the table as to whether or not the Imperial Guard were going to freeze to death, given the cold conditions and the nature of the metal armour that they wore. Hjalmar was complaining, loudly, that he would not have time to stop and check to see if any of the armoured knights would have frozen to death on their horses.

Apparently the guard had ways round that although none of that was discussed.

Ciri squeezed my shoulder as I sat down while giving me a sympathetic look. "Did Kerrass talk to you?"

"He did." I didn't want to talk about it and I must have given off that impression. There was a strange kind of disconnect in the way that Ciri was dressed. She was back to dressing like an Empress. She was wearing a fur lined version of the riding coat that she had worn when being introduced to the court back in Toussaint. High coloured with the fur giving her an illusion of bulk. She had leather gloves on as well as a flashing symbol of the Golden sun over her heart and voluminous skirts that were also heavy looking and fur lined. The coat was held down by straps that were the same, although made out of richer leather, that she wore so that she could carry her sword on her back.

I wondered how long it had taken her to convince Lord Voorhis and the royal dressmaker to agree to these straps needing to be made and the relevant adjustments to her coats and dresses when it came to these kinds of events. She also had a fitted set of metal shoulder guards, vambraces, bracers and gorget that were visible over the top of the coat and obviously tailored around that same coat. The armour looked pretty, delicate and ornamental but I guessed that if Ciri had agreed to wear it then it would also be of the highest quality

The disconnect was that although she was dressed like the Empress, she was still behaving like my travelling companion. She was laughing at Hjalmar's bawdy humour and gently teasing Helfdan with cautious affection. The only difference that might have shown that she was beginning to move back to her more Imperial state of mind was that she would occasionally watch Helfdan with a kind of calculating expression. She was watching him the way a lecturer watches a student when they are concerned that the student is either too clever for their own good, or just clever enough to be taken under their wing. I had no idea what was going on there and I was not in any kind of mood to ask.

"Skirts?" I teased her with a raised eyebrow. "I didn't think you would want to be wearing skirts when there might be danger."

"I don't," she answered with a grin. "But for two things. The first is that they really are very warm."

"And the second?"

She put her own cup of Skelligan tea down. She takes hers black with honey in case you are wondering. Then she reached towards her waist and undid a button and pulled the waist of the skirts away.

"Ah." I said. "They come off."

"They do indeed." She redid the button. "My Dressmaker hates me. Occasionally I have to let her have her way and design and make a dress that is just a dress. Without secret pockets for me to hide knives or that crossbow that you gave me. Or to have room to fit my sword harness beneath it with a hole just over the shoulder so that I can also get the sword in. Or that the dress meets Lord Voorhis' requirements for being properly armoured."

"I take it that the two of them hate each other."

"Oh, everyone hates Lord Voorhis. I think he enjoys it if we're being honest with each other. But the dressmaker does seem to get more angry with him than most. To be fair though. When I do let her go mad and design and make me a dress for this ball or that soiree (she pronounced it Soyrey. Obviously she knows how to say it but just so obviously, she doesn't really enjoy them. Except when she decides that she wants to enjoy the thing and then all kinds of entertainments turn up.) then they do look really good. And wearing them, I look amazing. Although to be fair, in those dresses, the average in bred cousin of the far reaching parts of the Empire would look beautiful."

She grinned happily as she watched my brain conjure the image.

"You didn't bring any with you did you." I accused.

"Of course not. It's far too cold in Skellige for such things. Even at the height of summer I would freeze in such contraptions."

"How is Lord Voorhis doing?" A thrall deposited a plate full of bacon, Sausage and all the other things that I never really have the stomach for in a morning.

"He's fine. If he wasn't so angry with himself, I would suspect that he was having quite a good time to tell you the truth. Nothing he likes better than to get to the bottom of a treasonous plot."

"Was it a treasonous plot?"

"He doesn't think so. He thinks it was a convoy of ships who took matters into their own hands when they heard that Helfdan was trying to destroy the Skeleton Ship so that he could gain favour with Queen Cerys and get in her pants."

"Not that he thinks like that."

"Nor does she. But a lot of other people think like that so therefore they assume that he must think the same way. And none of them knew that they were wrong. All they knew is what people were saying about Helfdan, which was that he has an unhealthy obsession with the Queen. They knew this because various people thought that they could gain favour with Hjalmar and the other people that hate Helfdan, by spreading those rumours."

She sighed as she took a mouthful of her tea.

"They were right too." She admitted. "Hjalmar still doesn't like him although, to be fair to him, he's really trying. But Morvran thinks that these traders heard this in the pub. They had heard about Helfdan's murdering one of their fellows on the docks when he departed and they knew about his competence. The Captain of the flotilla looked at his profit margins. Which are always large when the Skeleton Ship passes. And reasoned that Helfdan is a competent and feared Skelligan raider and that if anyone can get rid of the Skeleton Ship, with a famous Witcher in tow, then it would be him.

"They thought that if they could prevent this then they would preserve their profit for the future and sailed around looking for the Wave-Serpent. The Mage that was with them was hired to make sure that the ships could get away afterwards by influencing the weather for their benefit so they could cut through the ice and he was able to scry our location."

She shrugged.

"When they saw that we were making a straight line for home, they leapt to the proper conclusions and sailed to intercept. According to lord Voorhis and his interrogations of the Mage and the docks agents that work for that trading company (Freddie: Again, I have removed the name of the trading company at Lord Voorhis' request) they had no idea that I was aboard. But," she shrugged. "Ignorance is no excuse and now they must be destroyed to prevent other people from using the idea in the future."

"What are you going to do?" I was making an egg and bacon sandwhich out of the stuff on my plate.

Ciri shrugged again. "The Mage and the docks agents as well as any survivors from the flotilla will be handed over to Queen Cerys for punishment. When we can get through to the main land, the ships masters will also be arrested, interrogated and shipped to Skellige for punishment according to Skelligan laws."

"And the rest?"

"Well," She shook her head. "The trading company will be destroyed. Utterly I'm afraid. When the Skeleton Ship has passed and we are able to contact the mainland again, you can contact your sister and tell her that another of her major southern Competitors are going to be facing charges of Treason."

I shook my head. "All that death because they didn't want to lose a profit margin."

She looked at me strangely. "Come on Freddie. I know that you're not that naïve. The First Great Northern War was waged because my father had a lot of people that he wanted to get rid of so he gave them enough rope to hang themselves. The second Great war started because the Northern Kings and Queens wanted to appear like the good guys when they believed that another war was inevitable. They were right of course, it was inevitable but that's beside the point. Even now, my forces are invading Cidaris and Vergen because those monarchs refuse to stop cutting down the Brokilon forest so that they can sell the wood for... profit."

"And because you need to find something for your armies to do."

"Correct." She took another drink. "I am far from innocent in these kinds of things Freddie. They played the game and they lost. Now I must punish them and, I suspect, a good number of people who were ignorant of these events, because they played the game badly. Their mistake was in not making sure they knew exactly who was aboard the Wave-Serpent. If they had known, then they would almost certainly have backed off. And if they had succeeded, then even their children and their children's children's friends would be impaled slowly on spikes. Lord Voorhis is my presumptive heir and he would not take my assassination well. So it would be investigated and the truth would soon come out."

"I did not know that." I told her. "That he is your heir."

"Presumptive heir." She clarified. "It's one of the things that I need to sort out. This adventure has done me a power of good when putting a number of things into perspective. I don't think I'm ready to marry anyone yet, let alone get pregnant. There will be all kinds of efforts to take the throne off me when that happens on the grounds that "I will be too emotional" so I need to make sure that those things can me minimised and so..."

She talked for a while. All kinds of political things that kind of went over my head if we're honest with each other.

We all talked and gossiped. I learned that the there was another little layer that might explain why I hadn't heard from Ariadne. This being that the Skeleton Ship's winter is magical which can distort magical communication to and from the islands. I also learned that there were a number of so called "lesser" magicians who would be travelling with us as part of the Imperial Guard contingent. Their jobs would be to keep us warm and to keep us from freezing to death. It was one of those peculiarities of magic that I found tricky. On the one hand, trying to dispel the cold of the Skeleton Ship is impossible as the Ship is known to defend itself fiercely against anyone or anything that even tries such things. So instead, they would be setting up camp-sites to keep us warm. They would be providing hot foods and ensuring that camp-fires would not just be snuffed out by the cold.

I asked, and didn't understand the answers, about what would be the difference between doing this and attacking the Skeleton Ship directly but there was some mumbling and hand waving about "lines of force" that I cannot claim to understand. But I was told that we would be travelling in relative comfort at least.

Which was nice.

There was a certain amount of pomp and ceremony when we set off. Not as much as there had been when Kerrass, Ciri and I had first set off on the mission, way back when, but there was still a certain amount of it going on. After all, it's not every day that the brother to the Queen and the Empress of most of the known world set off on a mission to extract a cursed individual from where he was hiding from the sure and swift justice of the Queen's wrath, is it.

I wasn't really listening. I missed Ariadne a lot. It had been ages since we had last spoke with each other and I felt that lack keenly. I had assumed that there was something going on. Some kind of shield that had been preventing us, or that the she was busy or some other form of. "She can't answer you at the moment." But the truth seemed much more boring than that. "The Skeleton Ship makes magical contact to and from the island go a bit squinty." was literally the response I got when I finally managed to catch one of the Imperial Mages and ask him some questions.

"Is there anything we can do to..." I got that far before he interrupted me with a shrug. Telling me that it wasn't really his field and that I should ask someone else. But in the meantime, he was busy.

So I kept finding myself alone in a crowd and with not very much to do. Once again, I was being confronted with the truth that the more people that are travelling, the longer it takes everyone to get moving. I got the feeling that Hjalmar was just as frustrated as I was but at the same time, he was the one that was making sure that we all had enough water. That we were all wearing the correct protective clothes and that we were all properly prepared for the coming journey into the freezing cold weather.

So it gave me a lot of time to look around. I noticed, for instance, that Lord Ingimund was prominently stood forward in the crowd that came to see us off. The other Jarls were there as well but something in the corner of my brain, where my court training lives, noticed that he didn't really need to be standing that far forwards. Not really. I also noticed the look of absolute disgust on Lord Dreng's face who was stood nearby. I wanted to know about that but there was not really a lot that I could do to get the information out except walk up and ask him.

I got to realise how much I was missing Ariadne. The women of Skellige had resumed their efforts to catch my eye and I had had several attempts by various members of the An Craite Shieldwomen to have one of their number come and keep me warm during the long night. I count it as more luck on my part that I hadn't been caught by that trap the previous evening as I was more tired than anything and would possibly have agreed to anything in order for a bit of piece and quiet. But I suppose it's just as likely that they realised how tired I was and that I wouldn't be much good to them as a man. I would have seen the bed, my head would have hit something soft and then that would have been it.

But the looks that they had been sending my way reminded me that Ariadne had promised to come and see me while we were in Skellige so that she could protect me from the prying and insistent women. I missed her, deeply.

I was also lacking in distraction from the more maudlin thoughts that came with my short conversation with Kerrass that morning. There were many things that were happening here that I was not pleased with. The fact of what Lord Udalryk had said the previous night. About how we were sacrificing one man in order to save others. At the time, and indeed when I sat down and properly began to think about it all, I had little sympathy for the man we were hunting after. He had brought this upon himself. When he had fled his situation he had brought a terror into the Skelligan isles that the world had never seen before or since. He was, indirectly, responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of men, women Vodyanoi, Elves and Flame knows what else over the course of the centuries. So I found that I had very little sense of pity for him.

But the worrying question about what I would do. If you took all of that context away. If you removed all of my knowledge about the man Lennox and put it in a box and took it away from me. In philosophy lessons they would ask the question. Is the sacrifice of one man worth the lives of millions. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the most common example of how good men and women start down the path towards evil. They see that first step as being necessary and then the next step is that little bit easier, and then the next step and the next step and the next step.

It was that line coming back to haunt me again. His actions, or lack thereof, reflect badly on him. But what I was about to do reflect badly on me. And I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all.

I was stood with Kerrass at the time, as I often am in these kinds of circumstances. Ciri was conferring with Lord Voorhis about something and Hjalmar was shouting. Helfdan was stood quietly some way off doing his best to ignore all the noise and the hubbub. He would wince occasionally and the other survivors of the Wave-Serpent were doing their best to shield him from view.

So in the absence of anyone else, I turned to Kerrass and put the question to him. Were we doing the right thing? Leaving aside the morals, that this came about as a result of him setting us the impossible task as payment for giving me information about my sister and that he had kind of brought this on himself. Leaving aside all of the other things as well, what was the right thing to do here.

Kerrass sighed and scratched his chin with a gloved hand.

"It's tricky. Speaking as a Witcher, a contract is a contract is a contract. He told us to find a way to get rid of the Skeleton Ship. We have done that. He is almost certainly going to withdraw from his side of the agreement so..."

"I'm not talking about him Kerrass. I'm talking about me. And us. We're throwing a man to the curse. We're not even consigning him to death. We're throwing him towards an impossible curse that we do not, even remotely, understand."

"I agree with the others Freddie. He kind of has it coming. Curses don't happen for no reason. They can happen carelessly, but they don't happen for no reason. I will be stunned rigid if this all turns out to be as the result of something that other people have done and that he is an innocent victim in all of this. I will lay a ten percent share in your families company against my next fee that this is all due to something that he did originally. That he jumped over board was his efforts at avoiding the curse rather than confronting it head on. But the original fault is his."

"No bet." I told him. "Apart from anything else. I shouldn't be making important decisions based on a bet. But again, I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about the situation in general. I don't like that we're throwing someone to the wolves. To the torment of madness and worse than death because we think that it will solve our problems. That can't be right."

Kerrass thought about this for a while.

"It isn't right Freddie. It's never right. But sometimes, it's all there is. Rulers, generals and the like are always making decisions based on this very equation writ large. Do we sacrifice that unit of troops so that the greater army may live? Do we send the relief food to that village or the other village? Who does the doctor give the medicine to. The old person who has lived their life anyway, or the younger person who is more likely to survive the disease?

"It's not a new question for me either Freddie. It sucks every time. But in this case, the man that we are destroying, the man we are condemning is so obviously guilty that it's not even really a question. I will throw him to the Skeleton Ship myself and the only reason that I will feel bad about that is that we are probably throwing the information that he has into the water with him. But even that is not entirely reliable. It's just as likely that he is pretending to have knowledge so that you will feel sorry for him and do your best to rescue him."

"I know all of that Kerrass but as I keep trying to tell you. It's not about him."

"But it is Freddie. It always is. That's the only way that you can get through it. There is no such thing as the context-less situation. There is no situation where you can look at it and remove all knowledge about the situation from your own mind.

"I have read the philosophy books too. I was given a book on philosophy so that I could wipe my arse with the pages one year and instead of doing that, I read it. It was quite interesting. Utter bullshit but still quite interesting. I finally gave up on the situation which asked the reader what they would do. If they were confronted by a situation where two people unknown to you were about to fall off a cliff and you only had time to save one of them, which would you save?"

"It's the impossible question." I said automatically having either read the book or one just like it. "Quite common in philosophy texts. It's designed to make the reader think."

"Which it did." Kerrass admitted. "It made me think that the book was bullshit. Such a situation would never, never come up. There are always other factors. I would never be equidistant from the two of them. One would always be older than the other. I might know one and not the other. I might think, looking at them, that one of them could make the climb. One might be a male and the other a female. We might like to think that race and gender don't make a difference but they do. For example, Elves are much lighter than Dwarves are.

"And if none of that were true. If I was looking at a pair of identical twins that wore identical clothes and spoke in perfect synchronicity while they hung off an ideal ledge of equal footing, crumbling at an equal rate all along the ridge line. Then I would save the one on the right. Because my left foot is stronger and I would be able to spring from that foot in order to get to them that little bit faster.

"Context is always key. Always. It's just as much the key for the judges as it is for the criminal as it is for the victim. And make no mistake Freddie. This man is a criminal. There might be some victim in there as well but I absolutely believe that he deserves what's coming to him. He will achieve freedom when he confronts the cause of his curse and makes amends for it. That's how these things work."

I was taken aback by how angry Kerrass was. And I couldn't figure out why either. Shortly after he finished his little speech, Hjalmar announced that he was satisfied and that we were ready to depart. The cup of leaving was passed around with it's fortifying mixture of herbs and mead and we mounted up and headed out into the cold.

It wasn't that bad. The crew of the Wave-Serpent amused themselves by laughing at the various warriors of Clan An Craite who complained about the cold while we regaled them with stories about how we had done the same journey, bereft of magical assistance while, essentially, wearing rags.

But joking aside. It really was fucking cold.

So I was surprised at how sedate we were being. We all but took our time. We weren't cold, the magic of those mages that came with us made sure of that. Our cloaks kept us warmer than they would otherwise, we had hot food and drink. The horses were wrapped up in barding and blankets at all times and special care was given to the care of the mounts.

The Imperial Guard were armoured but again, it turns out that campaigning in freezing snow and cold in their full plate mail is something that has come up before. Apparently, it is considered a waste of resources to have a mage keep the soldiers warm in battlefield conditions. But these men were protecting the Empress and as a result, cost was not an issue. That says something about the way soldiers are treated compared to how mages are treated in the various militaries of the land. But I am not wise enough to be able to properly analyse that right now.

But we took our time. Scouts were sent out and the rear guard was also carefully monitored and checked. We set up camp early and rose relatively late. This was not a head on rush into the unknown. This was a calm and surprisingly collected movement of armed troops. To say that I was surprised was an understatement given everything that I knew of Hjalmar and his emotions regarding the mission that we were setting out on. It all seemed a little more cautious than I was expecting.

It was also a little boring if we're being honest with each other and I resented this boredom. While travelling under Helfdan's command, especially after the battle with the Ice Giants, it had become necessary that we all do our parts. That even Kerrass, Ciri and I who were, in theory, guests of the Wave-Serpent, were required to stand guard and do their bit around the camp. This was no longer the case despite all three of us doing our best to do exactly that.

The Imperial Guard in particular were falling over themselves in an effort to be accommodating to Ciri. There was never a time where there weren't people offering to take care of her horse, to make her tent up and to fetch her something to eat or drink. This effect seemed to pass down to Kerrass and myself as well. Which meant that I couldn't turn around without finding a cup of something hot and fortifying in my hand.

Hjalmar found this endlessly entertaining and openly wondered why he didn't receive the same treatment from his men. His men then roundly turned on him and informed him that if he wanted his arse wiping then he could damn well do it himself. That certain members of the Guard heard this and took offence only seemed to add to the hilarity amongst the Skelligans.

But the fact that I had gone from having to do a lot of these chores myself, including standing guard and things, to having it all done for me was jarring. The novelty of not having to worry about taking care of my own tent and belongings soon wore off. The other problem being that it also left me with too much time to think. I didn't want to think. I wanted to lose myself in the activity of things. I didn't want to think about what was going to happen when we got to the Druid's sanctuary or what would happen afterwards. I wanted to train. I wanted to cook. Hell, I would even have been happy with digging out the latrine trench. I would have been bad at it but it would have given me something to do and helped me to sleep at night.

At first, during our slow progress, I worried about the time that I felt we were wasting watching the world go by and the Skeleton Ship sailed past us until Helfdan, who was also feeling like a tool who people have no use for, broke it down for me. He told me that it takes about eight days for the Skeleton Ship to make a full circuit of Ard Skellig. It had been sighted off Kaer Trolde the day after we had crashed which meant that there were still six days, at least, before the Ship would sail through Kaer Trolde harbour which was when we needed to be back. At current rate of march it would take two days to get to the Druid's Sanctuary and two days back. Thus leaving two days for margin for error and politics.

His words, not mine.

But this was not as reassuring as he might have thought it was.

So I chafed at the relatively slow pace. Ciri, Kerrass and I had done the same distance there and back again in about the same period. But we had been under the impression that we were, essentially on a holiday. Travelling with the Empress and making sure that she had the time to chill the fuck out a bit. This time, there was a time limit and I wanted to get it done and over with sooner rather than later.

Then I found out why we were moving so slowly.

We were ambushed. A group of around fifty armed men just appeared out of the rocks, screamed and charged us down. They were terrifying to look at. Wild, ragged and painted in strange body paint that seemed to glow in odd ways. Hair flying this way and that with blood curdling rage dripping from their lips. Some of them were plainly so far gone that they had bitten through their lips and tongues so that blood was literally dripping from their mouths. That or it was the berries that they had eaten in order to work themselves up into the required frenzy.

It was not a battle. The Skelligans simply turned, braced shields and threw small hand-axes through the gaps. The ranks of the enemy rippled as most of them died before the remaining attackers simply bounced off the shield-wall. It was over before it had begun really. Over before I had time to realise that I was in a fight.

I am sometimes, still a little relieved that I can freeze at the sudden onset of violence. That it still takes me a little while to get into the swing of things and to properly get myself into a killing mood. When all of this started, back when violence happened in the village with the Nekkers, I remember recriminating myself because I had frozen in place rather than reacting with speed and decisiveness to the threat of violence around me. I remember being pleased as Kerrass' training as well as the circumstances of learning how the world works eroded at this delay between the fight starting and getting up to speed.

Now, I am reassured that I am not so far gone into violence that I react so carelessly. Reaching for a weapon and killing at the slightest disturbance.

But it was all over in less than a minute. The attackers had refused to be taken alive, much to Hjalmar's disgust and quiet admiration. We wouldn't have known who they were except for Svein looking down and recognising one of the men from his days working with Clan Drummond. He was actually quite upset with the matter as he looked down at a hairy, skinny man. He pointed and shook his head, genuine tears in his eyes and said "There, but by the grace of Helfdan, do I lie." Helfdan was made uncomfortable by the attention.

It wasn't really a fight. Not really. The poor things were half-starved and mostly frozen and completely drunk. The unreliable shield of drunkenness keeping them safe against the cold. It had not worked. A quick scout around found their camp site and refuge where we found another twenty men frozen to death. The verdict was that these men were religious and traditionalist fanatics who had heard, or been told, about our mission and had set out to stop it despite the obvious hopelessness of the situation.

But that was why we were taking our time while we travelled.

It happened twice more before we reached the Druid's sanctuary. The second time was even worse than the first. A paltry dozen men attacked us with old rusted weapons. They visibly shivered while they charged and the blue on their skin was not from any kind of paint. It was an odd feeling to feel sorry for the people attacking us. I have felt pity for men that have been outclassed or similar but this was more a kind of condescending feeling of "Oh loves. Let me get you a blanket and something hot to drink. Then you can charge us again later when you're feeling a bit stronger."

The other time was when we were attacked at night time. This was, by far, the best equipped and most organised of the three ambushes and I was not alone in thinking that if all three had gotten together to coordinate things then things might have gotten sincerely dangerous. As it was, these were the men who were dressed that little bit warmer and could therefore take their time and choose when they attacked, rather than desperately going for it in an effort to get their deaths over and done with as soon as possible.

But this was the only one that actually caused any casualties. We lost two of Hjalmar's guards and one of the Imperial Guard. The guardsman was taken by surprise as he was coming out of his tent. The worst possible case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time according to those men who saw what happened.

Apparently he had just stepped out and the enemy warrior was standing in his blind spot. The expression of the Nilfgaardian's corpse was one of disgust. As though he was disappointed with himself for dying in such a stupid and pointless manner. The two Skelligans were sentries who were killed by stealth. With the howling of the wind and the driving snow and sleet, no-one could blame them.

The guard's mages were able to deal with the rest of the wounded with relative ease. The fact that we were warm, rested and fed made all the difference in all of these engagements. That Hjalmar knew the terrain and that he properly consulted Svein and Gudavsoon about deployment meant that we were as well situated as we could expect to be.

But it also should not be made light of the fact that we were warm, dry, rested and well fed. I think that even Hjalmar would agree with that.

That's not to say that the journey was pleasant. The mages could not stop the wind from howling, nor could they keep the snow from falling. They could not keep the rear ranks from having to march through the slush that was formed by the marching feet of the front ranks. That last was a particular problem and was, possibly the single thing most responsible for our slow pace. I hated to think what the road would have been like if we had taken all of Hjalmar's warriors as had first been mooted. Or if Ciri had been forced by Lord Voorhis to take a full company of a hundred men of the Guard with her. I dread to think what the road would have been like then.

We came to the cross-roads where Kar and Thorvald would be turning for Helfdan's home village. Kar was going because he would be wily enough to ensure that the small party would make it back and Thorvald because he would be able to offer more spiritual guidance towards the families of the fallen. They would be travelling with half a dozen of Hjalmar's warriors and, not to be out done, a half-dozen members of the Imperial Guard. I was concerned about their lack of magical support to keep them warm but Kar waved off my concerns.

"At the pace we're going to be riding?" He told me. "We will be there by nightfall. Think of that Scribbler, while you're shivering in the Druid's sanctuary, arguing with pompous, dried up old men. I will be sleeping in my own bed with some strong whisky and a nice warm woman." He shivered in expectant and hopeful delight.

"There will be no woman." Thorvald confided in me. "I suspect that there will be many tears at his news of the fallen and that he will drink himself beyond the point where he will be of any use to any of the women that would accept him as a partner."

Kar snorted at this and went to mount his own horse.

"I intend to join him in his grief." Thorvald told me in passing when Kar was out of earshot. The older man had aged since the death of the Wave-Serpent. He was now older to look at than even Ivar had seemed when I had known him and I wondered if the priest of Hemdall had any intention of sailing again. He looked dreadfully sad and old. I hugged both of them, making a show of checking that my purse was still there when I broke the hug from Kar to some laughter.

"Never from you Scribbler." He whispered after hugging me again. "Never from you."

"I will see you again soon." I told him.

There was a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye as I watched them mount up and ride away with their escort. Kar and I had never been close and I had struggled with his humour some times. But I missed him when he went.

It wasn't that far from there to get to the Druid's sanctuary though and the increasingly extreme weather meant that standing there and watching Kar, Thorvald and the rest of their escort go was a little impractical.

Instead, we turned our horses and went on our way

The wind picked up and someone from the head of the column came down the line and tied all the horses together. It seemed a little strange for that to be happening in that I was perfectly warm, but they were right. I could barely see in front of me and it would be all too easy to get lost and be taken away from the magic of the accompanying mages.

We came round the way and finally started in towards the Druid's sanctuary. I had the strangest feeling come over me as we approached. As though I was lost somewhere in a place that I didn't recognise and that I was very far from home indeed. The thought occurred that I could be any traveller on any road in a snowstorm, just determined to put one foot in front of another, tugging my cloak and hood that little bit tighter around myself in order to keep the weather out of my face. The feeling was made worse by the fact that speaking to my companions was now impossible over the howling wind as well as the paradox that meant that I was quite warm while, at the same time, it obviously being freezing cold with the driving wind and snow that my horse, also, was beginning to struggle to force it's way through.

Then it just... stopped. I shivered as I seemed to pass an invisible line somewhere. I saw no marker to show where this was. Nor could I easily see the markers when I looked back. But I shivered. In the same way that you do when you have hot water poured down your back.

But the cold was gone. The cold and the driving snow that blew into our eyes and obscured our sight. We could see again and it was no longer as cold. It was the winter of idyllic Yule paintings, a gently falling snow that contributed to the soft blanket of snow that lay covering the ground.

Automatically I lowered my hood. I looked up, blinking the snow from my face and relaxing my hold on my cloak so that I could see properly and I found that we were close to the Druid's sanctuary. The hill with the old, wizened tree on the top where the formal announcement of new monarchs is made. We had approached it a different way to how we had done it with Kerrass and Ciri. Something to do with certain paths being closed off with the elements and weather being what they were.

"Oh," Hjalmar called out to those of us that were assembled. The way he spoke made it sound like he was moments from laughter. "Well that's interesting."

Arrayed against us were more warriors. I knew enough about the tartans and clan colours that the different warriors of Skellige wore. I would struggle to pick up on the subtleties that denote what rank they are or what village they belong to. But I can tell a member of Clan An Craite from member of Clan Heymaey fairly easily along with a man of clan Tordarroch.

There were two colours in evidence here. The first was the purple of the now defunct Clan Drummond and the grey of the clanless.

"Should have seen that coming I suppose," Ciri muttered as she moved to hide her face again. Like the rest of us, she had begun to lower her hood in the new protection from the weather but she lifted the hood back into place. It seems that there is a time and a place to reveal your identity and this was neither. She muttered something to the commander of her escort. I didn't catch it but the man moved towards the head of our column where Hjalmar and Helfdan had ridden and I moved to join them, Kerrass coming with me.

Hjalmar was in the process of dismounting from his horse. He looked... amused I suppose is the closest emotion that I can suggest as to what his mood was. I got the feeling that this wasn't unexpected.

"The Empress' compliments milord." The knight commander of the Imperial guard saluted Hjalmar crisply. "And I am to place my men and myself under your command in preparation of any violence. Barring six men that I will attach to the person of the Empress herself."

Hjalmar's eyebrows rose as his amusement grew. "Have you told her that you're holding those six men back?" He asked innocently.

"No my Lord." The full face plate of the guardsman's helmet kept his expression from view. "But I love my Empress. Although I fear Lord Voorhis' vengeance more if anything happens to her."

Hjalmar laughed at that. He turned to look for her and saw that she was keeping herself from view at the back of the column. "My friend, if some assassin or fighter can catch that woman off guard, then he deserves to kill her."

"I appreciate that view my lord. However Lord Voorhis was most insistent."

"I bet he was." Hjalmar's eyes scanned the warriors facing us. "No Druid's." He observed, "only warriors."

"That doesn't mean much." Helfdan muttered.

Hjalmar nodded before shrugging. "Well, we can't worry about that now." He turned and called back to the men "Hardhand?"

Svein stepped forward having dismounted with Helfdan. "Yes Lord Jarl."

"The field is yours Svein." Hjalmar told him. Deploy and command the battle. Put me where you will and you have to assume that we will have to attack to break through."

"That is going to be unpleasant." Svein commented. "Doable though. If you could find out who's in charge, that might be helpful if I know them."

"Just for you Svein," Hjalmar clapped him on the shoulder. "I will do what I can."

"Thank you, Lord Jarl."

Hjalmar turned and addressed the waiting knight. "You work for him now." He pointed at Svein.

The knight saluted Svein who was remounting and the two men moved towards the men conferring closely.

"Right then." Hjalmar rubbed his hands together in a gesture that almost looked like glee. "Let's go and see if we're going to have a fight today. Helfdan, Scribbler, you come with me. Witcher too please."

"I didn't know that parley happens on Skellige." I commented as we dismounted and started walking up the hill."

"Oh yes. Especially when forces are lined up like this." Hjalmar chuckled. "He'll pick a fight with me, I'll pick a fight with him and then we'll do our very best to murder each other. It's the honourable thing to do. They may even try for a contest of champions although I doubt it."

"I thought that Clan Drummond, such as it was, were not really known for their honour." I commented. "And some of these men are clanless,"

"And mercenaries and men and women in disguise." Hjalmar agreed. "But what's your point."

"Wait. In disguise?"

"The warrior, third from the right of the grey rock with the circle carved in it." Helfdan commented. "She is a Shieldmaiden of Clan Tuirseach. Or she was."

"Then, given that, this is probably supported by Jarl Ingimund." I commented. "What's to stop them just killing us when we approach."

Hjalmar laughed. "Oh, we should only be so lucky if such a thing would happen. That would give the other clans the power that they would need to wipe the remains of Clan Drummond from the face of the islands. Cerys can outlaw being clanless, insisting that men must either join other clans or leave the islands all together and these men can be taken alive and interrogated without problems."

He grinned at me.

"And cousin Rolf has long wanted to be Jarl. To the point where he keeps trying to chase the women away so that I don't get married and produce an heir. But don't tell him that I know that. It makes it more funny when he fails."

Four men stepped out of the lines to come and meet us and Hjalmar started laughing.

"Snorri is that you?"

One of the men grinned. "Fuck you Hjalmar." He said with warmth. "Still alive?"

"Only just although I persist in attempts to drink myself to death." Hjalmar told him. "Yourself?"

The man Snorri shrugged. "We all have to die some place."

"How's your cousin. What's her name?"

"Runa. She's fine. Married a fisherman and moved to Undvik. She's a woman of Tordarroch now. More sensible than me."

The leader who had been getting increasingly angry at this exchange spat.

"She, and other traitors will be put to the sword as well as all who stand against us."

"It is no treachery to choose life." Hjalmar snarled. "Nor is it dishonourable if you are not a warrior and so ordered. I remember Runa as a weaver, not a Shieldmaiden. Seriously Snorri, what are you doing standing with Svartlebrand here?"

"Some have more honour than others." The leader hissed.

"Really?" Hjalmar's eyebrows rose. "I have come to pay my respects to the Druids and yet you stand in our way, obstructing our passage. Move aside."

"These are not your lands, An Craite." The man spat. "These lands belong to Clan Drummond. The rightful rulers."

"Who we conquered." Hjalmar told him. "We beat you. And these lands belong to us now."

"We do not recognise your authority."

I saw Hjalmar and Snorri exchange glances. Snorri shrugged a little sheepishly.

"I wish I had known that I could do that." Helfdan spoke up, speaking seriously. "I wish I had known that I could simply say that "I do not recognise the authority of the people ruling me." My life would have been so much easier if I could do that."

"Raiding who you want." Hjalmar agreed with his Sea-Captain.

"Sailing where I want. Keeping all my taxes and goods, ignoring the summoning to arms."

"Marrying who you want." I said slyly to a black look from Hjalmar.

Helfdan didn't react and carried on talking. "So much simpler if I could just ignore the orders of my Liege Lord."

"I mean, it's not as though it would be breaking the most sacred laws of our people. Passed down to us from The God-King himself." Hjalmar commented before, aprubptly, the humour left his voice. "These lands belong to me and through me, the Queen. You will stand aside or you will be made to. Such is the law."

"It is also the law to leave the Druid's sanctuary inviolate." The man, Svartlebrand snarled.

"Who said anything about the Druids?" Hjalmar demanded, quick as a snake.

Svartlebrand said nothing.

"Actually," Helfdan spoke up again. "That the Druids rule this land is not a law at all. It's a tradition. Lord Ermion was named a Lord of Skellige so that he could speak at assembly and address the Jarls without fear of reprisal, but that Lordship did not come with a deed of land ownership. He himself said that man does not own land, only nature does and he refused."

Hjalmar grinned. "I knew there was a reason I kept you around Lord Helfdan although I should remind you that I still expect my taxes to turn up on time. Don't get any ideas from Svartlebrand here."

"Of course not." Helfdan seemed genuinely shocked and insulted until he realised that Hjalmar was joking.

Hjalmar turned back to Svartlebrand. "Traditions can be broken any time we want to. And if I choose to go into the sanctuary, then I will."

"The Druids will stop you. They are on our side in this."

"I doubt that." I heard myself comment. "How will the rest of the islands react if they learn that the Druid's attacked a Jarl who was coming to see them."

"Ermion attacked our Jarl." Svartlebrand insisted.

"No he didn't." Hjalmar replied. "The Madman was enraged at the choice of the Jarls. He was declaring civil war while under the threat of Nilfgaardian invasion. Ermion went to calm him and was forced to defend himself from The rage of the Madman. The druid would now lie dead at the hands of the Madman if the White Wolf hadn't been there."

Svartlebrand spat again.

"So who's side are you on here Svartlebrand?" Hjalmar was relentless. "Do you hate the druids for what happened to the Madman or do you want to protect them? Anxious minds want to know."

"We will not let you past" Svartlebrand declared as though that was the end of the matter. "The Skeleton Ship must be preserved and the Druids must be protected."

"I would be fascinated to learn how you knew about all of that." Hjalmar told him. "I have not said that that was what we were here for."

"The Druids agree with us. The Skeleton Ship must be preserved for the good of all of Skellige. It has made us hard. It has made us tough. The Druids will be on our side and agree with us when it comes to keeping the Skeleton Ship on the water."

"Will they?" Kerrass wondered in his grating, killing voice. "Will they? Or will they prefer that the world returns to the natural rhythms of life. Where the seasons come when they are expected and..."

"I will not listen to this blasphemous..."

"And the sudden cold does not kill animals, plants and crops." Kerrass overwhelmed him with force of will."

"You will not be..."

"You will let us past," Hjalmar snapped, "or you will suffer the same fate as your dear, unlamented lord who deserved what was coming to him."

Svartlebrand snarled and went to hurl himself at Hjalmar before being restrained by Snorri and one of the other men.

"I will kill you Hjalmar." Svartlebrand declared. "You and your blasphemous Witcher friend and your illegitimate whore-bitch of a sister. Our oldest traditions must be preserved. The Druid's sanctuary must remain sacrosanct. The Skeleton Ship must sail and we will kill any that try to stop it."

"You will fail." Hjalmar was suddenly as cold as ice. " Too many know how it's done now. Snorri? I hope you survive. I will do my best to have you taken alive."

The man Snorri shook his head, pushing Svartlebrand to the back. "Clan Drummond will never die so long as one man wears it's colours." He told us. "And while the clan lives, then do I serve. Then do I fight."

Hjalmar sighed and shook his head sadly. "It was good seeing you Snorri."

"And you Hjalmar." The two men clasped hands before Snorri turned to Helfdan. "Say hello to Svein for me would you Lord? Tell him that some of us know that he did not deserve what was done to him."

"If you live." Helfdan told him. "Come and work for me. I need good men."

Snorri shook his head. "You are still An Craite. My lord ordered us to war. Otherwise I would serve you happily." Then he turned and walked back up the hill.

"Fuck," Hjalmar said, a little sadly. "I liked him and now I must kill him."

"Who is he?" I wondered as we turned and walked back down the hill to where our forces were lining up.

"I liked his cousin." Hjalmar told me. "Goddess but she was amazing. Would have broken me in half but it would have been so worth it." He grinned. "Glad she married. It would have broken my heart a little if she had been one of the ones to be destroyed by the Madman. Snorri was a good man. Went on a few raids with him back in the day. Knew what he was doing, kept his head, cared more about success than he did about personal glory and plunder. The sort of man that we all want sailing on our crews. Will never be famous, never make a name for himself. But Skellige lives and breathes on the backs of men like that."

"It will be a shame if he dies." Helfdan added. "Svein always spoke well of him."

"Skelligans really do know everybody don't they?" I commented.

"If we don't" Hjalmar agreed, "Then we know a man who does."

"Or a woman." Helfdan added.

Svein came to meet us. It seemed that the Imperial guard were arranged in the middle with the Skelligans on either flank.

"Who is it?" Svein wondered without preamble.

"Svartlebrand." Hjalmar told him.

Svein snorted. "We used to call him Svartlebrand the lightening." He told us. "Back in the day, that was his nickname. He took it as a compliment and he had the design engraved on his shield and his weapons. I heard that he even had it sewn into his cloaks. What he didn't know was that he got the name as an insult because one of his lovers said that he didn't last long in the bed chamber. That it was all over "Lightening fast". He's like that in life as well. Quick to anger and impetuous. This isn't going to last long."

"Snorri is here." Helfdan told him.

Svein shuddered and paled. It was as though Helfdan had slapped him in the face. "Damn." He swore before taking a deeper breath. "Ah well. I liked him but I don't think he will make much of a difference. To be here at all people will be a group of hot-heads."

"I think we're looking at a group of individuals." Hjalmar told him. Suddenly serious. "Bands of small numbers being brought together. I would also be willing to bet that the attacks that we had earlier were part of this group once, trying to get some glory for themselves."

"Glory hounds then." Svein nodded, recovering his calm. "Mercenaries as well?"

"I think so." Hjalmar agreed.

"Then I think that the plan stays the same." Svein told him. "Suck them in and then wrap around. This is terrain for a battle, not for heroes."

Hjalmar nodded. "Where do you want us?"

"If you lead the left, I will lead the right." Hjalmar nodded as though he knew what Svein was talking about.

I had no idea what was happening but I did my best to practice Kerrass' mantra.

I should leave it to the professionals and do my best not get in the way. Just in case you are wondering.

"Where do you want the rest of us?" Kerrass wondered.

Svein was rubbing his chin. "They will have two ideas." He said. "The majority of them, men like Svartlebrand, just want to die as martyrs. They think that they are dying for some kind of holy cause and that in doing so, the islands will rise up and overwhelm the unholy forces of the enemy."

Hjalmar snorted with laughter at the thought.

"Snorri though," Svein shook his head. "Snorri's a different kind of bastard. He would refuse to plan for something where the objective is to die. He will have a plan and I think that means that he's going to try and kill Kerrass. They have clearly been told that the Witcher knows how to dismiss the Skeleton Ship. They will decide that he has told the Scribbler, the Empress and a couple of others but they will, I think, assume that the Witcher would have kept something back in order to earn his keep. So Snorri is going to try and kill the Witcher, I think. He will charge down the middle in an effort to break through and kill Kerrass, Freddie, Ciri and Helfdan."

"Then why hasn't he attacked already?" Helfdan wondered. "We've been standing here for a while."

"If it was just Snorri then I think he would have done." Svein said. "Honour be damned and there is nothing more honourable than victory and success anyway. But Svartlebrand wants to be a martyr and so needs the illusion of legitimacy that a proper battle will give him. He has the moral thinking that he is standing guard over the druids so I think Svartlebrand is holding Snorri back until we attack."

"And we are going to attack?" I finally asked one of the questions that had been brewing in my mind. I couldn't hold it in any more.

"Oh yes." Svein looked at me as though I was stupid. "It's been years since I've commanded a good battle sized battle."

"The Frost Giants." Helfdan commented with a half smile.

"That doesn't count." Svein protested. "That was a fight really. Small unit tactics. This is a proper battle." He grinned at his Lord. "So I want the Witcher, The Empress, The Scribbler and The Bastard behind the main line. Nice and close behind the Imperial Guard. Those bastard black ones are just itching for a fight as well and I would be stunned if Snorri gets through even the first rank."

"He will jump." Helfdan warned.

"He will miss." Svein declared.

"It will be hard." Helfdan said. "But we should try and take Snorri alive. Make him a thrall for a year and a day and see where he comes out afterwards. Him and any who come with him. There are good men on that hill as well as the mercenaries and the people in disguise. It would be a shame if Skellige loses their strength."

"I will pass the word." Svein said as Hjalmar nodded his agreement.

"Besides." Hjalmar said. "I want another crack at his cousin."

"Didn't he say she was married?" I wondered as we turned to walk back to our side.

Hjalmar shrugged for answer.

With a clatter, the Imperial Guard opened up an avenue so that Helfdan, Kerrass and I could move through to where Ciri was stood. She was scowling.

"I know," she snapped at me when I looked at her. "I know that I need to be behind everyone and I know that I need to be kept safe. But I was just getting used to being able to do things dammit and now..."

Helfdan said nothing and took his place.

"So how do these things start then anyway?" I wondered aloud. "Do we all just... oh here we go."

I didn't see a signal, or hear one. The guard just started marching forward at a fairly steady pace. They clattered as they marched, the uniformity of their armour meant that each step clashed like a cacophony of discordant bells. I was terrified, let alone anyone else. I could hear shouts and things coming now but couldn't tell you anything else.

There were shouts, screams and that now, oh so familiar sound of metal on metal. Metal on leather and wood. Metal on flesh.

I shuddered and Kerrass tugged me back into place so that we were tucked in close behind the marching guardsmen.

It didn't last much longer. Not because we were the stronger or that we were the better equipped. But rather because the Druids decided that now was the time to intervene.

How do I know this? The thunder rolled and the lightening flashed. It still snowed but now there was a storm like quality to the weather. It would seem that the Skeleton Ship is quite happy to accept things and magic when that magic goes along with and emphasises what it was already doing.

The cold came back. There was a mage nearby and he paled, falling to his knees as blood started running from his nose. Suddenly we were freezing and shivering with it.

Apparently there had been a handful of blows exchanged. Maybe, half a dozen casualties and most of them were wounded rather than seriously hurt.

But Holy Flame, those druids know how to make an entrance. The side of the hill seemed to open as a dozen, terrifying old men walked out. Black robed men with deep cowls, long beards and tall staffs of office. They strode from the hill like the very fury that their faces betrayed and when they gazed about them, we quailed before their wrath.

At their side walked huge Wolves, shaggier and scarier than any that I had seen before, drool dripping from their teeth. Behind them walked giant men that seemed to be shaped from the trees that surrounded the hill and above them flew the crows that lived in those self-same trees.

That part of me that persists in giggling at even the most tragic of stage plays noticed that Lennox wasn't among them. I felt the laughter tickling at the back of my throat. He will have been hiding somewhere in the back of the hill, quaking in his boots.

Fighting stopped up and down the line as men backed away from each other with the general air of school children who have been caught out in a fight and the priest in charge of the school is walking along the hedges with that, oh so particular glint in his eyes. The two sides moved away from each other.

The Druids were led by Ermion. Tall, pale and terrible. He stood forwards in his robe and glared about him. Holding his staff aloft he swept it around himself in a circle. There was a majesty in the gesture. Majesty and a regal sense of purpose and direction so powerful that everyone there knelt.

Including Kerrass and myself.

Everyone knelt but one person.

"Uncle Mousesack." Ciri shrieked at the top of her lungs and charged through the kneeling men, squealing in delight, throwing herself at the older man with her arms held wide.

I have seen the warm, furiously thinking ruler. I have seen the passionate person. I have seen the remote thinker and the terrifying, cold rage that lives in the Empress' heart. I have seen the warrior, the killer, the leader and the fighter. I have seen the awesome will that she can direct at others in order to get them to do what she wants and I have seen a terrible pain and loneliness that lies in the very depths of her eyes.

But until that day, I had never even dreamed that I would see the gleeful little girl that she once must have been.

Ermion himself looked as though he had been struck by a pole-axe.

His eyes widened, his mouth fell open in amazement and it was a solid several heartbeats before he, almost reflexively, returned the embrace.

"Well?" Ciri demanded with more than a little petulance. "Are you not going to say that it's good to see me?"

"But..." He protested. Kerrass and I had followed behind the rest of her personal guardsmen. "But..." For a man who is renowned for his self-control and calm in the face of crises, Lord Ermion was not handling this very well.

"Because it's so good to see you." Ciri exclaimed loudly. I'm telling you, the world changes when you see the most powerful woman on the continent snuggling with a favourite uncle. I will never be the same.

Finally, Ermion's hands and arms seem to come under his command again adn he took hold of Ciri by the shoulders and held her at arm's length so that he could properly look at her.

"But, we were told that you died. That the Wave-Serpent was destroyed."

Ciri laughed, reached out and booped him on the nose. For those people that don't know what a boop is, and I didn't until I saw Ciri do it, a boop is where you reach out and deliberately and firmly press someone's nose while saying "boop" in an abnormally high pitched noise.

Ermion laughed in astonishment and joy before bringing Ciri into a firm embrace. Ciri's arms flapped around in mock protest at the fierceness of the entire gesture.

I might have been wrong, I was some distance from the gesture and I cannot be sure, but I thought I saw tears in Lord Ermion's eyes. I could well believe that The Empress has been booping Lord Ermion on the nose since she was a baby and giggling at the silly faces and noises that he pulled as she did so.

"But..." Ermion asked again as he seemed to be doing his best to smother the Empress with his affection. Literally smother her. He seemed to be laughing and weeping at the same time.

"We were betrayed." Ciri finally pulled away, wiping her eyes. "You would think, after all this time, that I would be used to it. But it still stings."

"And so it should." Ermion told her. "And so it should. You must come in and tell me all about and by what miracle you come here alive."

"By no miracle," she told him. "This man," she gestured to Helfdan. "A man who has no reason to love me, almost killed himself to see me here. Many of his men died, his ship died to see me to shore." She had raised her voice so that all could hear it. There is a time and a place for oratory and part of that skill is knowing when to use it. The Empress is a very good orator.

Ermion looked over to where Helfdan was shifting his feet uncomfortably. "Then I embrace you as a son." Ermion moved and threw his arms round Helfdan who was so obviously mortified and massively uncomfortable that it provoked laughter from both sides of the brewing battle. But I had seen the blood drain from Helfdan's face and I looked to see where Svein was. He was over on the flank of our forces and his own face, even beneath his helm looked stricken.

I stepped forward and spoke quietly. "Lord Ermion. The gesture is well meant and well accepted but Lord Helfdan has taken some... injury or illness as part of our adventures that makes..."

Ermion pulled away from Helfdan and looked away. "Of course, of course. I should have seen."

Helfdan shuddered and had to turn away for a moment. Kerrass moved with me to block other's view of him as he stood there and sweated, breathing deeply for a moment. Then he looked up at me and I could visibly see him returning to himself from a sense of almost panic. He was breathing deeply now and brought himself back under control. He didn't thank me, nor did he clap me on the shoulder or make any other kind of gesture of gratitude. Instead he looked me in the eye for just a fraction of a heartbeat. It was like I had tossed a drowning man a rope.

"So still," Ermion began again. "You and your fellow survivors must come inside. We must talk about your adventures. I scryed for you you know. I used all the skills that I have and I could not find you."

"We have reason to believe that you were blocked." Ciri told him, speaking a little more formally this time. "There are... other factors."

"Still, you must come inside and we can..."

"MY LORD." Svartlebrand bellowed, stomping forward. "You CANNOT."

Ermion turned, lightening fast and held his black staff out at arms length so that it pointed at Svartlebrand's face. "Cannot?" He hissed with such raw menace that I shivered. His words seemed to echo around the place. Amplified by something that I could not see or understand. "I think you will find that I can. Furthermore, I. Will."

Ermion looked around. I was a little closer than others so I think he did very well all things considered. I will place money that in the heat of the emotional shock of seeing Ciri alive again, he had clean forgotten about the presence of the two small armies that were facing each other.

"What is the meaning of this?" He whispered. It was definitely a whisper but it was heard by every man there. "You come to our sanctuary armed for war. And you, who would keep my niece and nephew, if not by blood from entry to the place where both of them have rulership?"

"We come here as escort." Hjalmar called from the other flank. "The Empress, Helfdan, the Witcher and Lord Frederick have been attacked and betrayed by many who should have given them aid. The Queen, my sister, thought that they might need protection. The Queen, my sister, was correct."

I particularly liked how he repeatedly reminded everyone listening that the Queen was his sister. Hjalmar is about as subtle as a warhammer to the testicles. I know that women have no frame of reference for that so I am informed that I should say that he is as subtle as a warhammer to the tit. Not my words so don't be cross with me.

"We have been attacked, twice, by outlaws and traitors on the way here and now we find many here who would keep us from visiting you."

"Why would they want to do that?" Ermion wondered.

"Lord Ermion." Svartlebrand had sunk to his knees against the point of Ermion's staff. A point that had not moved by the way.

"Hmmm?" Ermion lowered his staff and looked surprised to see that Svartlebrand was still there. I think he was pretending but at the same time, he could not have delivered a more effective rebuke to the man if he had tried. Telling someone that they are beneath notice can be awfully powerful at times.

"Lord Ermion." Svartlebrand took a moment to get his thoughts in line. "We are here to preserve the inviolate nature of the Druid's sanctuary." He was visibly trying to stay calm in the face of everything. "These people intend to destroy and dismiss the Skeleton Ship."

"So?" Ermion wondered. "That would only be a good things for the islands and the people that live on it. It would mean that life could become as nature intended it to be, rather than at the whim of some kind of curse."

"But... But..." Svartlebrand. "The traditions..."

"Traditions do not interest me as much as results." Ermion waved a dismissive hand. "Besides, their mission was only to find out who it would be done, not to actually get it done. I know this because it's still fucking freezing so it clearly hasn't been done yet."

"The whore-bitch has decided." Svartlebrand protested. "She has decided that centuries of our culture and actions should be set aside in favour of a foreigner's..."

"Careful Svartlebrand." Helfdan snarled. There was a raw edge to his voice that promised violence. "You will keep a civil tongue when discussing the Queen or I will remove it."

"I am Lord Svartlebrand, Bastard and you will treat me with..."

Something had reached inside Helfdan and triggered his temper. "I am Lord by the right of my Jarl and my monarch. You have no Jarl as he was a traitor to the islands in time of war and..."

"He was..."

"Be silent, both of you." Ermion snapped. Exactly like a tutor calling his class room to order.

Hjalmar had moved towards the conference now and put a calming hand on Helfdan's arm. Helfdan flinched away at the sudden touch but nodded when he saw who it was and moved off a little way.

"To be fair, Lord Ermion." Hjalmar spoke up. "And to tell you where we are. The Queen took a vote of the Jarls to help her decide what must be done. That vote was tied, three to three."

Ermion winced. "Poor Cerys. We really must look into getting a new clan and a new Jarl to avoid that kind of thing."

Hjalmar grinned. "The Queen agrees and means to address the matter. I have no doubt that if you travel back with us, she would accept your advice."

"She should properly reinstate Clan Drummond to it's rightful place." Svartlebrand snapped. "She should return to us the lands that she has taken, aid in our rebuilding and pay us weregild on the lives lost in her unjust persecution."

"Oh shut up." Hjalmar snapped.

(Freddie's note: For those unaware. A Wereguild is the price put on a life. If a man is killed by another he must pay the family and the lord of the fallen person, the cost of that person's life. Roughly supposed to be the equivalent of money that a man might provide or earn over the course of his lifetime. A servant is relatively little but a Lord or Jarl's blood price can bankrupt clans. This happens so a Lord, jarl or monarch does not lose out on the amount of money that he would get in tax and income from the fallen person and the person's family will not starve or lose their homes because the family member has died. Not a bad system in theory but there are so many loopholes and variables that mean that the full wereguild is rarely paid. Too often, such matters end up before a court at some Jarl's Thing (see previous notes) and the matter congeals into a blood feud.)

"If she did," Ciri said, a little slyly, "would you abide by her rules. You would have to you know. It's treason not to and no sooner would Clan Drummond be reborn than it would die again."

"This bickering is pointless." Ermion snapped again. This time, even Ciri was not free from his ire. "What did the Queen decide?" He demanded of Hjalmar.

"The Queen chose that the plan suggested by the Witcher should be moved forward." Hjalmar spoke carefully and precisely. Thinking through his words as he spoke. "I stress that there is still room for a final change of heart or change of decision. But that depends on you Lord Ermion."

"Why?" Ermion wondered, not unreasonably.

"Because one of your Druids lied to me." Kerrass said, flatly and harshly, speaking for the first time and people visibly flinched. His voice grated in the open air amongst other men who have been trained to speak in public since a young age. Kerrass has not. He has been trained to kill. "He lied, and his lies have led to the loss of lives. Both recently and over time."

"They mean to drag a Druid from the sanctuary." Svartlebrand was beginning to feel as though he was losing the situation. He might not have been wrong either, but there was a new, desperate edge to his voice. "They mean to drag him out in chains and torture him for information."

Ermion listened to this in silence. "Do you? Lord Hjalmar?"

"That depends on him, Lord Ermion." Hjalmar responded. "But as the Witcher seems certain that this man is at the centre of the entire affair and, if true, that makes this man responsible for every death that has happened, every piece of destruction that has taken place when the Skeleton Ship passes... I will have no guilt at all in doing precisely that."

"See my Lord Ermion. See?" Svartlebrand crowed, believing in his victory. "They mean to violate the Sanctuary and deny the Druid's sacred charge. They have no authority to do this. They seek to set aside our most sacred of laws as to the inviolate nature of the Sanctuary."

"The Sanctuary is not inviolate." Ermion told him. "Nor are the Druids above the law. They never have been. We are not some state religion like the Eternal Fire in Redania or the Sun Cult in Nilfgaard. We exist on Jarl Hjalmar's land and live here on the Queen's sufferance. That has always been true."

Svartlebrand's mouth fell open. "But..."

"Close your moth." Ermion told him. "You look like a fish. You have told me that you are here to protect me from marauding bandits who seek to attack our goods in the face of the Skeleton Ship's passing. I accepted you on the grounds that your people are clearly starving and would freeze to death without our help. But Lord Hjalmar and The Empress of the Continent are hardly common bandits are they?"

Svartlebrand struggled to speak.

"You really should have paid more attention to the Skald's lessons in school Svartlebrand." Ermion chided him. You would have known all these things. In the mean time," he turned back to Ciri, Kerrass and myself. "I would like to listen to these accusations that you level against one of our druids and assess the matter for myself. If he deserves it, then I will tie them to your horse myself."

"We will not permit this." Svartlebrand protested. "We had thought that you, Lord Ermion, at least would stand by the ancient laws and traditions but we see that even in this we are betrayed. We will not allow this to take place." He stalked back to his men.

"Oh very well." Ermion sighed before turning to Hjalmar. "Try not to make too much of a mess on my lawn and take as many as you can alive, many of them really are desperate and hungry."

"I will try. But it would seem that the lure of a poetic last stand rings too true in certain ears."

"That is always the case." Ermion said sadly. "Gentlemen, I assume that you will not be separated from your men and will not want to come inside to safety while this inevitability is played out."

"I cannot speak for everyone here." I told him. "But I stand with the men who got me this far."

Kerrass nodded his agreement.

"Sorry Uncle." Ciri agreed, her voice hard.

"Very well, very well." Ermion looked sad and old again for a moment. "Just bear in mind that the real dangerous people are the people driving the fodder forwards from the back will you."

"We will remember, Lord Ermion." Hjalmar told him.

So began the battle of Gedyneith, or the battle of Druid's Grove. Or the battle of Sanctuary if you prefer to follow the traditionalist propaganda that has been thrown around since these events have taken place. I cannot answer to that. No more than the fight with the Ice Giants and their forces, I didn't think of it as being a battle. There was just shy of a hundred men on our side with around half as much again on the other side which doesn't sound like much of a battle to me.

And it isn't, not really. In the scale of the great northern wars it would be considered little more than an "action" or a "Skirmish". But I am not in charge of such things. It will be down to history to decide what it will be called and I suppose that such matters will be down to the whims of Queen Cerys. Certainly Hjalmar is calling it a battle and I would like to think that he would know when it comes to that kind of things.

He's also the one who keeps telling me that I can now say that I fought in a real battle. I don't think I did. The most that can be said for my actions that day was that I ducked a few thrown stones and helped a guardsman to his feet when he was knocked down.

Then I helped with the wounded. Kerrass and Ciri didn't even bother drawing their swords and although I had my spear ready, on the grounds that I can't draw it from it's new sheath, put it together and bring it to bear as fast as they can with their swords, I didn't use it. So I dispute the assertion that I fought in the battle...

See, even I'm calling it a battle now.

… Instead, I will say that I watched it. And, having studied history on the subject, Kerrass' assertion that if you prepare for a situation properly. If you have a good plan and follow through on it while making appropriate preparations for things to go wrong. Then that plan will work.

We were outnumbered, almost two to one but where our opponents were collections of individuals and small units with uncertain command structure. The Guardsmen and the An Craite Huscarls were trained as units. There was a clear chain of command in that Svein was in charge with Hjalmar in second and the commander of the Guard in third. Each of the three men leading an element of our battle line and none were in competition with the other for honour or glory.

Our opponents were ragged, tired, hungry and cold. This despite the Druid's work to the contrary. We were rested, well fed and quite warm.

Our opponents were also desperate, their weapons and armour were old and badly maintained. I am not insulting them as I say that. Given how these people had been living since the fall of Clan Drummond, it was a miracle that their weapons hadn't fallen apart before. It was also a testament to the care that had been lavished on them. But sooner or later, good armour and good weapons need to be oiled and scoured and sometimes they need to be taken to a smith.

As Kerrass would tell us all. Why do a job badly, which often makes a problem worse, when you can get a professional to do the job for you.

But again, our troops were the cream of the Imperial guard in their segmented plate mail over chain with their huge shields. The Huscarls were the hand picked personal guard and standing warriors of Clan An Craite. Hard men, battle-scarred veterans of war and raid wearing their thick, hardened leather armour over hauberks of steel chain and their shields were broad.

It was not a battle. But nor was it a slaughter. Not really. Hjalmar passed orders that we were to take prisoners where we could. So we lined up and advanced up the hill, the Guardsmen leading just a little. Our opponents screamed and charged down towards us striking the Guards line with a crash. The Guard fell back in a bow.

This was still part of the plan.

The enemy, sensed victory and had pressed forward in the face of the retreating guardsmen. This meant that the Huscarls could wrap around them and completely surround the enemy forces. What this means, in practice, is that every one of our troops could fight. Whereas many of our foes were trapped in the middle of the formation, pressed in on all sides.

And that was it. After a bit of time, the Skelligans started to chant a single word over and over again.

"Udbytte" was the word and they chanted it over and over again. The Nilfgaardians heard this and chanted their own version. "Cynnyrch".

"Yield" they chanted. Stamping their feet as they did so. Any man not presently engaged clashed weapon against shield or dragged wounded from the lines.

In the end, that was what happened. The enemy yielded. Some men refused to be taken and insisted in their martyrdom. Svartlebrand was one of those. There were other men as well who were not taken alive. Men and at least one woman who took poison rather than be taken alive. Something that incensed Hjalmar more than anything else that had happened that day as they were also among those that appeared to be better fed and equipped than everyone else and could be assumed to be spies and agents of existing powers.

There were also some people killed. Because that kind of thing always happens when people swing weapons at each other. But in the most part, we took prisoners rather than making corpses. There were broken limbs and similar injuries. The Druids came out to help with the wounded.

If you have ever thought that the Priestesses of Melitele have bad bedside manner then you should thank that most wise Goddess that you are not in the care of the Druids. I saw one Druid telling one of the injured that if he wanted to complain about his injury then he should have considered not getting in a fight in the first place. Another man was told that if he whined about the unfairness of the victory, then he, the druid, would walk away, leaving the injured men to deal with it. When the man protested, the druid, literally, got up and walked away, leaving the injured man to bleed to death.

Or he would have done if another Druid hadn't arrived to tie off the wound properly. I'm getting at battlefield injuries. I had my hands in someone else's injury at the time, tying of an artery, but the difference in time between the first druid walking away and the second druid turning up meant the difference between the arm working again and not.

Therefore, the man's worth as a warrior, and not.

Harsh is not the word for it. In my experience from both sides of the operating table, the overwhelming emotion that you feel when you are injured and waiting the attentions of a healer, is fear. Or Terror. The eternal question of "Am I dying?" will shortly be answered. Men fight off the fear many different ways. I prefer humour, but anger is what warriors tend to prefer. This because, in this case, they are trying to fight off the pain and the fear and to fight anything, in a warrior's mind, is to get angry at it.

I have heard it said that men who will willingly charge into the killing ground of a besieged castle and hold a line against overwhelming odds will often need to be forced into the surgeon's tent, at knife point, to have a tooth pulled or a boil lanced. I've seen it happen too. Sir Rickard once told me when I commented on this that this is down to the fact that in battle, a soldier can hit his enemy back. Whereas in the surgeon's tent, they're not aloud to punch the surgeon afterwards.

Or during.

It's a valid argument.

I am pleased to say that Snorri survived. As did a number of people under his command. They were disarmed and I'm told that they were among those that realised that they were over-committed and that they were going to be surrounded and beaten. They had tried to get back and out but the press of men prevented them from doing this. He seemed sad and resigned rather than anything and he had about a dozen people with him who followed his orders to surrender and acknowledge that they were beaten. They were men of honour and I heard Svein say, more than once, that if the rest of Clan Drummond had followed his example rather than the examples of men like Svartlebrand. Then the clan would have still been in existence today.

The Madman died a matter of moments after announcing his rebellion in the face of the Nilfgaardian invasion fleet. If his heir had been stronger and listened to proper advice rather than being determined to make a name for himself, then the rest of the clan would have told the new Queen that the madman had been driven mad by grief at the loss of his son. They would have begged her to not hold the rest of the clan accountable for the sins of one man and then they would all have gotten on with their lives.

She would have done it too. In the face of Nilfgaard and later, the attacks of the Wild Hunt, Or the Wraiths of Morhogg if you prefer, she would have needed the troops.

So Snorri just sat there, telling his men that they would survive a year and a day of Thralldom to take up the fight again later, or to reassess the world that they found when they re-emerged. I did notice that they made a point of surrendering to Helfdan though. Hjalmar was not displeased by this and to be fair, I rather think he was amused. But that was a thing for a little while.

The other warriors that were taken rather than surrendering, looked down and spat on Snorri and his men but the Guard took command of them and kept them apart. Along with Snorri, a number of Women had yielded and there were some children as well. The youngest was eleven, given a short blade and told that it was his sword. He was particularly dismayed when he was told to hand it over now that he had yielded. Hjalmar took charge of the lad, found the boys mother who wept with gratitude that her son had survived and the boy spent the rest of the day, riding on Hjalmar's shoulders.

Or so I'm told. By this point, Ciri, Kerrass, Helfdan and myself had gone inside the Druid's sanctuary. We had waited until it had been clear that those men that were going to die were already dead or that the only thing that we could do for them was to make them more comfortable. Hjalmar had delegated the matter to Helfdan and ordered that, should Helfdan consider the matter correct, "The Criminal should be taken back to Kaer Trolde for the Queen's judgement."

I noticed, again, Hjalmar's sense of theatre, in that he said this thing loudly and prominently so that everyone could hear it.

So Helfdan came in with us. I had the strangest sense of Deja Vu. Everything was different and the same. I was in new clothes since I had last come here. My old clothes either disposed of or lost with the Wave-Serpent, I had been put in fresh attire. Much to Kerrass' amusement. He claimed that I was too skinny to be a proper Skelligan and he is probably right.

Ciri was dressed as the Empress and an Empress returned from battle at that with her metal Shoulder guards, greaves and bracers with the Sun of the South emblazoned brightly on her breast-plate.

Kerrass was as he ever was. His armour was the same. His underclothes were Skelligan now, cut for warmth and he wore a Skelligan fur cloak to help with the cold. But other than that, he was still Kerrass. Swords on his back and grimace on his face.

But other than that, it was only Helfdan that kept the entire thing different. Ermion led us through the hill to his office where we had met the man Lennox before.

Ermion opened the door. I noticed that he muttered something and gestured a little bit as he did so. Judging by the way that Kerrass' medallion jerked I guessed that there was something going on with that but you would need to ask Ermion. The five of us entered the room, led by Ermion with Kerrass and Ciri next and Helfdan bringing up the rear. Helfdan just shifted sideways and planted himself in the corner of the room, obviously aiming for the same trick that he used back in the council of the Jarls, intending to just fade into the background and therefore, to fade from view.

Lennox was there. He was pacing and in a panic. His large, round and slightly chubby face was sweating profusely. The room was still warm but the chill had reached even this far down and I thought that his sweating was a little bit excessive. His hat was still worn on his head and he would occasionally take it off and mop his brow with it before placing it back on his head. He was still wearing his boots but now I knew that there was something different about him and I recognised what it was. I had walked like that myself as it makes life aboard ship that little bit easier. He had the rolling walk of a sailor

If you want to imagine it, it's very similar to the way horsemen walk in that they are slightly bow-legged. Horsemen get this effect from the fact that they are more used to life in the saddle than they are life on foot. Sailors get that look because they are used to compensating and having to keep their balance in the face of the swells and the waves that they must fight against every step of their way. I could see that now. I could also recognise the fact that he was uncomfortable in his boots. Now that I knew that he was a sailor and had sailed on the Skeleton Ship, I knew that he would have habitually gone bare-foot and therefore, boots were uncomfortable to him.

I deliberately kept to the back of the group. This because I was rather concerned that if I was further forward, I wouldn't be able to keep from strangling him.

That we might be angry had clearly not occurred to him as the look of relief that came over his face as Kerrass and Ciri came into the room was almost comical. He visibly sagged as though he was a puppet and one of his strings had been cut. Or that the stick had been removed from his back and he felt that he could relax more.

"Oh thank God." He breathed. "I had heard that you had died."

"Not quite." Kerrass said as he moved into the room. Kerrass' attitude seemed friendly and almost relaxed. "It was a close run thing though."

I had had to turn away, my fingers were twitching with a desire to do violence. There were all these clues that had completely passed me by last time. His walk. His discomfort in his boots. His attitude, different facial hair and conventions. All signs that he was, in some way, different and alien to the rest of us. As though he played by different rules.

This was confirmed, again, when he referred to "God " as a singular. I was looking for these clues now and there was another example of one. In the north, we would either say "Gods,"given that we have many Gods and spirits in our lands. Or we are specific. We might refer to Melitele when we are praying for a sick persons recovery or we might call on Kreve in battle or on the Holy Fire to protect us from evil. This also shifts according the specific cares and thoughts of the person doing the praying. Brother Mark, or Cardinal Mark of Oxenfurt if you prefer, will always call on the Holy Flame. As will our mother. A druid might call on the spirits and so on and so on.

If you come from the south, you might call upon the holy sun. In this example, a fellow of the South would say "Oh thank the Sun."

But Lennox hadn't. He had thanked God, singular. I don't know what kind of God would demand a denial of all other Gods given the blatant and common proof that there are other things going on but that's not for me to question. Maybe a question for the theologians amongst you.

But I was angry. The anger had shifted in that moment. I was no longer angry with Lennox so much as I was angry at myself for not seeing all these things previously and letting this man off the hook. I saw a similar feeling crossing Ciri's face as well although I got the feeling that her thinking was much more rueful and amused than mine was. As though she was more able to laugh at herself rather than to be angry.

"Perhaps we should all sit down." Kerrass suggested as Ermion moved to sit behind his desk, turning the chair so that he could easily watch the rest of the room. Every so often, Ermion would shift so that he could look over at Ciri before he would smile slightly. It was as though he had an almost constant need to remind himself that Ciri was still there.

"Why?" Lennox demanded. A little petulantly if you ask me. I might be being unfair to Lennox but I really was very angry indeed. "You have come back. The Skeleton Ship is still coming. Do you not have other things that you need to be doing?"

Kerrass ignored these questions and sat down on one of the stools that were in the room. From the looks of them, they hadn't been moved since the last time we had all sat in this room. Then he looked up as though surprised.

"You're still standing." he stated as though confused.

Lennox looked as though he had struck a wall. That thing that Kerrass does so well of distracting someone from their current thinking. So, intellectually, they almost have to turn around and start again from a different direction.

"Do you," Lennox began, a little more carefully, "know how to get rid of the Skeleton Ship?"

"I do." Kerrass told him.

"Then shouldn't you be out there, doing your ritual or swinging your silver sword around or something?" Lennox demanded. If you look carefully, you can tell the difference between anger that is born out of circumstance and anger that is born out of fear.

Kerrass gazed at the still standing Lennox, letting the man's anger wash over him. "In a while." He said. "But first I have some questions for you."

"Questions. I told you everything. Why do you have to come here and ask me more questions?" He was pleading now. "Please, just get rid of the Skeleton Ship. Get rid of it. Destroy it, shatter it, dismiss it, fight it, do what you need to just free me... free us all from it's presence." He burst into tears.

Kerrass stared at him and took a deep breath while he waited for the smaller druid to calm down. Ciri and I exchanged glances while we waited. Ermion was still, not watching his fellow druid dissolve. He had his head in his hand, staring at his knee or something while the sounds of Lennox's sobs permeated the room.

"It doesn't work like that." Kerrass told him when the tears and sobs began to abate. "There is a time and a place, as well you know. Don't you? You should or the Druid's education standards leaves a lot to be desired."

Lennox had sunk to the floor, pushing aside the stool so that he could cross his legs and sit. Another sailor's habit that I had not put together last time.

"So how do you do it?" Lennox asked after a long time.

"You know, don't you." Kerrass told him softly, but not kindly. "You know exactly how it's done. You know when and where and you know what has to be done. To get rid of the Skeleton Ship we have to be at Kaer Trolde for when it takes on stores for it's continuing search. We must give the ship what it is looking for. What it is searching for. We must give it that thing that it has been missing for all these centuries."

"And what's it been searching for?" Lennox asked. I honestly don't think he knew the answer.

"You." Kerrass told him. "You must be given to the Skeleton Ship. That's how the islands will be free of the curse. That's how this entire thing ends and..."

Lennox moved. He was up and out of his seated position so fast that I couldn't have reacted. Kerrass did but by that point Lennox was already past him, past me, Ciri was rising to her feet but she was out of position as Lennox bolted for the door. But Helfdan had seen it coming, reading the room as he had, he had guessed at this result and caught the fleeing man.

"Let me go." Lennox struck out at the Skelligan as Helfdan spun him back down to the ground, twisting Lennox's arms behind his back and all but sitting on him. "Let me go, they're going to sacrifice me to dark..."

"They didn't know that that was what needed to happen until you fled." Helfdan told him. "They were pretty sure that you were holding out on them, but they didn't know."

"But that will curse me to..."

"I lost men," Helfdan's voice shook with something. "I lost good men in looking for the answer to a riddle that you set us. A riddle that you already knew the answer to. Good men and a good ship killed because you kept things hidden. If you had just asked me for help then I would have helped you. But you didn't. You will not find any sympathy from me."

I was surprised by how expertly Helfdan hauled the, objectively, much bigger man back to his feet before manhandling Lennox back into the room and all but tossing him inside. I shouldn't have been. It takes a lot of strength to stand at the tiller through a storm and Helfdan is the kind of man that knows how to distribute weight and apply levers.

"Hierarch?" Lennox pleaded. "You cannot allow them to..."

Ermion looked up from his pensive frown. "Nor will you get sympathy from me. I warned you, back when you first charged the Witcher to this mission that you might not like what he would find. Witcher's are agents of Chaos. And I think that this is one of those reasons why so many rulers don't like them and fear them wherever they go. They have a tendency to see into those places where we do not want them to look and to go where we don't want them to go. They are trained to stand on the outside of things and therefore see what we hide, even from ourselves. I warned you then. I told you that you might very well reap the whirlwind and I am not surprised that you are unhappy with the result."

Ermion turned to Kerrass. "Ask your questions Witcher. Then I shall decide whether I shall plead the man's case before the Queen."

Lennox's head had fallen during this little speech before he looked up. "Please Witcher. You cannot do this."

"You lied to me." Kerrass' voice was death. "If there is one thing that has killed more Witchers than anything else in this world, it is the client lying to those Witchers. You charged me to get rid of the Skeleton Ship. I can do that. I know how and I have the method within my grasp. Like others have said and will doubtless say again. If you had openly come to us and asked for help, we would have done our best to help you. But you lied and good people have died as a result. You have one hope and one hope only and that is that there is something in the truth that means that there is a way forward. But make no mistake, you will be taken from this place and you will answer for what you chose to do before the Queen of Skellige when she will decide your fate. Even if I have to carve my way through an army, this thing will happen. So only in truth, lies your salvation now."

Lennox pushed himself up to a seated position, his eyes were vacant and I wondered if it had all gotten to the point of being too much for him. I have seen it in the faces of some of the other people that Kerrass has talked to over the years. Especially when he has to tell, otherwise, good men and women that they have been responsible for the curse that is killing villagers. Or that the wraith that roams the fields at night is actually the spirit of their daughter, or the rejected woman that was driven to commit suicide by a man's thoughtless gesture.

People just shut down, their eyes go vacant and I was worried that we had pushed this man too far. He was a coward, that was certain, but another term for cowardice is "being overwhelmed by fear." In our anger, had we overwhelmed this man?

When he spoke, it was as though he was forcing himself to that point. As though his voice was coming from a long way away.

"No." he said, little more than a whisper. "No, why would I do this? Why would I help you now?" He straightened against the wall, tugging his tunic and robe back into place after the man-handling that he had received at the rough hands of Helfdan.

"You came to me," he half whined, half growled at us. "You came to me to ask me for help. I set a price on that help as is my right and my privilege. You do not dispute that, you did not dispute that. But now you come back here and tell me that you won't that you can't. Indeed, you come back here and tell me that you intend to sacrifice me to this thing. What kind of monsters are you?"

He shook his head.

"No. You have broken your word. You are nothing but a common thug and an honour-less mercenary. I gave you a job to do and you have not done it. The deal works both ways and now you have broken that deal. What possible reason can you give me to make me give you what you want."

"Oh that was a mistake." I breathed. Louder than I intended. I know this because Ermion, Ciri and Lennox turned to look at me. Kerrass didn't take his eyes off the man on the floor "Calling him an honour less mercenary was a mistake." I clarified. "He tends to get all tetchy when people question his honour."

"Freddie is correct." Kerrass' voice was awful. "You told me that I was to get rid of the Skeleton Ship. You did not tell me how or add any conditions to this mission. You told me to get rid of the Skeleton Ship and in return you promised to tell us the information that we wanted to know."

"I also think," Ciri began, "that your moral outrage would be a lot more believable, as would your innocence, if you had tried to convince us of it before making a break for the door.

"You were the one that broke the contract." Kerrass told him when Ciri had finished speaking. "You gave me a mission with false and incomplete information. Ignorance is an excuse in this kind of thing. But you knew what we were looking for. You know that the answer to getting rid of the Skeleton Ship was right here all the time. You knew that. What you really wanted was to find an other way to get rid of the Skeleton Ship. A way to sever your connection with it. That is what you wanted. I suspect that you would even have been happy if this had led to your death as all of the years and all of the death suddenly came home."

"You have no proof of this." Lennox protested.

Kerrass laughed. It was a false laughter although there was amusement there. It was a bitter and angry noise, but most of all, it was a tired laughter.

"This is not a court of law." He told the cowering Lennox. Ermion shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "This is a conversation. One way or the other I am going to take you from this place and we will put the matter before the Queen. I do not think you will enjoy that process. Even if you survive this passage of the Skeleton Ship as the trial must be delayed so that proper witnesses can be brought. When Ragnvald is brought to Kaer Trolde and recognises you from all the visits to the Watchtower. When the Queen finalises some kind of peace with the Vodyanoi and they attest and testify to your identity. When a Sorceress or Sorcerer is brought and examines you. I do not think that you will enjoy a proper trial and I think that, even then, the results would still be the same."

"I will not help you. Even by the original deal, I will not give you the information and if you have thrown me to... to that." He swallowed, "then I will not be able to give you the answers that you seek. You have to get rid of the Skeleton Ship and then I will answer your questions."

I saw Kerrass and Ciri exchange glances. "Well you are just insistent on trying to make me hate you." Kerrass snarled.

"There are mages who would tear the information from your mind if I ordered it." Ciri began but even I could tell that she wasn't happy with that prospect.

"I might not object to much in all of these proceedings." Ermion told the room. "But I would object to that. As I recall, even the council of Mages, the circle and the Lodge had rules against the use of such spells. And rightly so if I may say it." He sighed and rose to his feet, moving to crouch next to the cowering Lennox.

"Look at me Lennox," Ermion said. There was a warmth to the voice, also a power that I did not expect. I have no idea if there was magic there because I could not see Kerrass' medallion. But certainly there was a compulsion as Lennox fought to keep his gaze from rising to meet his superiors. But Ermion was determined.

"Look at me," he said again and Lennox's bloodshot eyes, shining with unshed tears rose to meet the elder druid's gaze.

"You had to know that this day was coming."Ermion told him. "You had to know that all of this would catch up to you in the end. If not now then it would have happened eventually. Indeed, it seems as though it was even surprising that it has not been done before. You have lived this long but even you must realise that it is time to face up to what happened. Time to put this issue to sleep, once and for all."

"I can't." The tears began to fall from Lennox's face. "You can't possibly begin to realise what it was like." There was a strange accent to his voice now. Something that we had not heard before and that I did not recognise.

"Then tell us." Ermion insisted. "Tell us what it was like. He might have a stony face and a snarl on his lips but this Witcher will help you if he can. That is always true as well. They might hate us and condemn us with their warnings and their thoughts and prayers. But even despite all of that, if they can lift the curse, then they will. But you must tell him everything."

"Where would I begin?" His accent was becoming thick.

"Where does anything start?" Ermion said gently.

Lennox's mouth opened and shut several times. I felt laughter scrabbling at the back of my throat at the faces that he pulled. Dislike and scorn were warring at the back of my throat with the laughter and pity that threatened to come up to fight it.

That was when I think we broke Lennox. Not with anger or anything of that nature, rather I think it was with the kindness that Ermion showed him that he finally broke. The look of horror that crossed his face when that happened was... Rather haunting.

"Damn." Ermion muttered as Lennox curled into a ball, hiding his face from us, drawing his knees up.

"What now?" Ciri asked no-one in particular.

"I don't know." Kerrass sighed. "I suppose that we wrap him up and tie him to a horse. I can't help him or anyone if he's like this. Too impatient, that's my trouble."

"Time is running short though." Ciri responded.

"I know." Kerrass sighed. "The risk is that one of the reasons that the ship hasn't found him yet is because he stays here in the sanctuary. There must be some powerful wards on this place to keep him hidden."

"There is." Ermion agreed. "There always has been. He's been hiding here for a long time hasn't he."

"I think so." Kerrass agreed.

"Can you help him?" Ermion asked. "For all the damage that he has done and will continue to do over the years. He has also done a lot of good. His herb-craft has saved lives over the years."

"Honestly?" Kerrass rose to his feet and paced a little. "I truly don't know. I am not pleased that he is holding the information that Freddie needs over my head. I do not like ultimatums Hierarch, nor black-mail."

"I can understand that." Ermion nodded. "I am also not entirely pleased at those kinds of things. But can you help him?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. I think he's brought the curse down upon his own head. There is hatred in this curse and I couldn't tell you from whom it comes, nor can I tell you who it is really aimed at. I very much doubt that he is a bystander though."

Ermion nodded to show that he was following Kerrass' thinking.

"The danger is," Kerrass went on. "That this curse does not follow what we know of curses. If it originated elsewhere then there might be completely different rules. But if I had to guess, he," Kerrass pointed at the shaking man on the floor. "Needs to do something to make amends. Whatever that thing is, it will not be fair, it will not be reasonable and he cannot do it from here."

"But if he tells you his story, can you advise him?"

Kerrass shrugged. "If he tells the story and if it is even close to anything that I recognise. There's a lot of "if" there."

Ermion nodded. "I understand that." He took a deep breath. "Then there is something that I can try."

He knelt and started to chant, the words were relaxing, almost like the rhythm of the priest's prayer in a church and like those instances I nearly found myself falling asleep. I was tired and I was struggling to keep my mind aware.

"Lennox?" Ermion said after a while. I was not the only person that jerked as they woke up from whatever thoughts they had. "Lennox?"

The man on the floor had relaxed a little, the rigidity had come out of his limbs and he stared around at us, a little slack-jawed but he was aware. He seemed to blink often.

He said something. Words and sounds that I didn't recognise. It wasn't dwarven or any language of the north. There were sounds in it that almost sounded like the Elder tongue but that wasn't quite right either. Elder speech is lyrical and musical whereas this was more abrupt and harsh.

"What did you say Lennox?" Ermion tried again, gently.

He looked confused and said something more.

"Anyone?" Ermion looked around the room. "It must be his original language

Kerrass shook his head looking at me and I had to shake my head too.

"He's speaking English." Ciri said quietly.

"What?"

"He's speaking one of the languages from his homeland."

She leant forward and answered Lennox's questions.

"Can you translate?" Kerrass asked.

"I can try." Ciri stated after a shrug.

(Freddie's warning: This took quite a long time to work out. The story that we were told in Ermion's office is as close to this as we can easily manage. But there are some words that defy description. We can guess that many of these things are descriptions and place names, slang terms and colloquialisms that we just don't have in our world. Also, Lennox was under some kind of hypnosis that made him a little more suggestible. But that was a two edged sword. In that he was keen to speak but he couldn't understand us. Therefore Ciri had to reach for a language that she hadn't used in several years. This means that this is our best guess as to what happened and what he said to us that night.

It is also true that he was far from an entirely willing speaker. He would often go backwards and forwards in the narrative, changing past details and jumping forward to change what he had said before.

I worked with both Ciri and Ermion to produce this account as both thought it important to record this for posterity. My understanding is that Ermion is going to find people who can read this account to the Skalds and the other people that might want to listen to the account so that it can enter into the histories of the islands. So, take what is written here with a pinch of salt. I, for one, believe maybe a fraction of it. I think it's much more likely that the man Lennox had seen some things and that what he described to us... I think he absolutely believes what he said. But take I with a pinch of salt, is what I'm saying.)

My name really is Lennox. Joseph Lennox. I was regularly teased by the other kids that I had a Scottish name and that is true, Lennox is not an uncommon name in Scotland but, as far as I know, I was English, born and bred.

My Father was a Sailor. He sailed with the royal navy until he could no longer stand the way that navy worked. He always told us that he left, but judging by the scars on his back, I would guess that he was flogged and thrown out. I don't know if that was true. I know that he was a Sailor and a good one. That his father was a sailor and his father was a sailor and so on and on. I don't know if it's true but I was told, often enough, that this was the case.

My mother was a dock whore and father was one of her regulars. I have no doubt that over time he essentially became her pimp. There was never enough money from his voyages with the shipping companies to see my mother and I through his long absences. There always seemed to be something that we could never afford. Or that we needed something that had to be bought now. Looking back, I would guess that my mother wanted Gin and my Father wanted whisky. I don't know though.

I don't remember it being a bad childhood. I remember rough affection although I doubt that they loved each other. She was a warm pair of arms and a soft pair of tits for him to come home to and he was a rough enough customer so that when other men tried to take advantage of her, she could remember who they were and father would kick their teeth in when he got home.

I helped out when I could, mending nets and things to make a bit of money to put food on the table until Da decided that I needed some proper education and took me to sea. I hated him for that and I never forgave him. Even when he didn't come back from a voyage and my mother wept at his graveside.

She was told that he had been swept over the side in a storm but I remember noticing that there wasn't any other storm damage to the ship and that no-one else had fallen overboard. I always wondered about that. Whether he had picked a fight in some Dutch tavern and hadn't been ready for the steel to be drawn. Or whether he had another warm pair of arms and soft pair of tits waiting at the other end of the shipping routes. He would not have been the only man to do that. I never had the nerve. But I wondered if he had gone after another man's wife, or had got into gambling debt or one of the many other reasons that a man might be killed on a long voyage.

Justice at sea is brutal. Brutal and swift. In such close confines, there is no other way to do it. You have to do it that way otherwise that's how mutinies start.

But I am off track. My father took me to sea. Again, he could have done worse by me. He could have made me join the navy as a cabin boy or he could have signed me up to the trading companies that he worked for where, again, I would be a cabin boy which, as often as not, meant that I was the officers slave and bed warmer. Not many boys survived those trips. Far too many of my friends chose to go over the side in a rain storm. In a storm when the deck is trying to throw you about, it is sometimes awfully tempting to let go of the rail or let go of the rope and let the storm take you.

Instead, my father sent me to sea in a smaller fishing ship where every hand was needed in order to bring the catch in. So having me tired out running errands, or broken from the beatings, was not something that could be tolerated by the Captain. But it also meant that I could learn the trade. Get my sea legs under me and learn how the sea worked. Those times with those fishermen taught me to respect the ocean, even when I hated it.

I hated sailing. I always did, always have and I always will. But here's the thing. I'm good at it. I'm never short on work and I've tried to turn my hand to other tasks and other careers but over and over again, business ventures fail, money runs out and then I have to run back to the sea. Where I always find work.

There is always some Captain that is willing to take me and then back to sea I go.

Do you know what that's like? To only really be good at one thing but to hate that thing above all others. Do you have any idea how that can sour you against all other situations? I can climb the rigging and walk across the crossbeam in the highest of winds. I have stood in the crow's nest during storms and I have held the wheel and steered us true but I can't bring home the business. I don't make friends and I have never managed to attract a woman with more than my purse.

Not just prostitutes. I came back from a trip once with a fat purse and I started a venture. My money attracted some attention but it turns out that I am just as bad at love as I am at doing anything with sailing. That time, the money ran out because she spent it. I would be angry but my friends warned me in advance that that was what she was going to do and I fell for her pretty eyes.

I hate being a sailor. I hate the stale biscuits and the brackish water. I hate the mean eyed officers who enforce the strict discipline of the sea while at the same time I am able to see why such discipline is absolutely necessary. I hate the fact that I am more comfortable in bare feet than with boots. I hate the sound of the gulls on the air and I have never been fond of fish which is the only fresh food that you can depend on when you're at sea.

I hate the games we play and the jokes that we tell. I can't sing and for all the grace I show at the rigging, I can't dance either so hornpipes are like torture to me. I hate sailors and their stupid sense of arrogance and stupidity. I hate the way they look down on everyone else to the point where we invent stupid names and stupid insults for them in order to make ourselves feel important and superior when it is clear that if any of us had any sense, we would be farmers, or merchants or wagon drivers.

Yes, I tried to be all of those things. My crops died, my horses went lame and got collick respectively before I was robbed on the road and the goods that I bought, I couldn't sell at a good enough price to pay my way.

But most of all, if there is one thing that I hate about sailing over and above everything else, I hate that I am so very good at it.

Do you know what that's like? Do you? To be good at only one thing in your life and to then hate that one thing above all others. I actually quite liked being a farmer and no-one could tell me that I didn't work hard enough at any of the careers that I chose. But the only thing that I could ever do with any kind of success, was to be a mariner.

So my Da sent me out with the fishing fleet and I hated that too. Have you ever tried to attract a woman when your hands stink of fish all the time? The Dock whores are fine with it but at the end of the day, those women will fuck anything providing that it pays for the gin. So trying to attract a decent woman, let alone a wife, you can't do that as a fisherman in that part of the world. But we needed the money so father sent me to the fishing fleet and I worked at being a fisherman until my Da died. Then it became obvious that I would need to take a better paying job so that I could keep my mother and myself alive. For reasons that I could never understand, my mother was absolutely distraught with the loss of my father. They fought, often hated each other and openly scorned each other but she wept at his funeral.

But to keep a roof over her head, I would need to join a trading company. The companies all had their offices down by the wharf and there was always signs out that sailors were wanted. We lived in Portsmouth which was also the headquarters of the Navy so I had to be careful not to get drafted into the King's own Navy. Dad had told us plenty of horror stories about what life was like under that rule. But there were always offices there on the front and there was always a sea of masts, waiting for crews to set sail and take them round the world. I found a berth and set sail.

And that was the story of my life. My mother finally succeeded in drinking herself to death about halfway through my third voyage. I did not hate her, I rather think that I pitied her but her death... it left me feeling free. So free that I nearly floated away. I would not have needed a house like the one that we lived in so I told the landlord that I had no intention of taking it up again. He was pleased with that although he swindled me on the rent.

That was the way of things then. All of us, trying to swindle each other out of hard gotten, hard fought money. We, all of us, would sooner cheat than tell the truth. So he swindled me and I started being able to make plans for the future. "One more trip" I told myself. One more trip and that would be enough to make my fortune.

Well I did that one trip and that trip we were taken by pirates. So I needed another trip to recoup my losses. And another trip. Then I tried to be a shopkeeper. It was too late by this point for me to start another trade.

I rather liked the idea of being a cobbler.

A Danish crew turned up one day and set fire to my shop. Apparently it was an innocent mistake, they had gotten drunk and assumed that I was the one that had cheated them. I hadn't. It was actually two streets over but by the time this had been figured out, the sailors had been strung up from the gallows.

So I needed another trip and another trip and that was how my life went. A trip to the other side of the world or two to get some money together before returning home and then trying another venture which would inevitably fail meaning that I would end up having to return to sea or would end up in the debtor's jail.

There is even something to be said for the suggestion that if I had just stuck at it, if I had just stayed at sea over the years rather than returning to land and trying my hand at the various, inevitably failing ventures, that I would have been promoted and received more money and been able to retire. It is possibly even true and I did consider that as a possibility on more than one occasion.

But the truth was that I simply could not bear that course of action. I could not face the constantly being at sea. So I would always disembark at the first possible opportunity. Always and I would always move off onto the next thing, the next attempt at making money and establishing myself in some way.

But always would I be pulled back as well. Not by choice, it was as though I had little choice in the matter and that some power was determined to keep me at sea.

I would like to tell you that there were signs and portents that this particular voyage would be dangerous. That this particular voyage would be cursed but there was nothing at all. There were no eclipses. Nor was there a three headed dog watching us depart. No woman screamed and no cat tried to sneak aboard. We obeyed all the traditions, we carefully made sure that there was an even number of men aboard, we obeyed all the superstitions and each man spat, made their peace with God and stepped aboard putting our right feet on the deck first.

I cannot say that the Captain was a bad man, given to cursing God or invoking the Devil's name. Neither were there any bullies aboard. No stowaway women, no fleeing convicts.

I almost wish that there had been. I almost wish that there had been something. Something that I could point to that would say why the voyage was doomed right from the very beginning. But there wasn't. There was just me. I was no Jonah though. As I say, I was a good sailor and I did my job and even though I hated it, I was still able to take pride in being able to do it well. So no Captain of mine ever had any kind of reason to complain and no man ever complained to see my name on the roster of the ship's compliment.

It wasn't even as though my most recent venture had failed either. This would be my second voyage. We were heading south, due to come round the cape of Africa and head into the Indian oceans. The ship was relatively small really, but the Captain had an idea that a small quick ship would be able to specialise in the most expensive spices. We wouldn't be able to buy much anyway so we would buy the product and be able to come back with extra speed given our smaller size. It was a good idea and we all expected to be well recompensed for our efforts. I was not yet resigned to being a sailor but I thought that I could make enough of a profit from the voyage to invest in a few merchant enterprises that would enable me to buy a road inn somewhere.

It would be as far away from the sea as possible and live to grow fat on travellers needing somewhere to sleep.

There was nothing strange about the voyage at all and I have spent days, weeks... years of my life in trying to figure out if there was som clue. Something that could tell me why that voyage, more than any other, why that voyage was so very cursed.

We were a Dutch ship sailing for the VOC trading company. The owner was using that concern rather than the more local ones because they paid preferential rates to Englishmen who would sail for them. We liked to think that this was because English sailors and English ships were the best in the world. This was certainly true of the navy but, looking back, I think it was more to do with the fact that the VOC was trying to compete with the English trading companies. So just as the VOC would try and hire Englishmen to go and sail for them, the English East India Company would try and get Dutchmen to man their ships.

And on and on the cycle goes.

So we sailed from Portsmouth. It was a good day, not too early a tide, the wind was good and we made excellent progress. We came round Spain, having to head a little further into the Atlantic than we were entirely comfortable with in order to out run some Spanish privateers but these are the kinds of problems that you have to take into account when you sail a trading ship. Our cargo was mostly building materials. Again, small things like nails and hammers. Things that could not be depended upon in the East but which England could supply in plentiful numbers.

We passed the Mediterranean and started sailing down the coast of Africa. We stopped a couple of times to take on Fresh water because there is always the need for Fresh Water on a ship and the rains were not plentiful enough to ensure that we could quench our thirst despite the Tarpaulins and barrels that had been set out for precisely that purpose. But there was no reason that we shouldn't be able to sail around the cape in good time and be into Indian Trade waters before the serious storms started to blow up.

We were wrong.

I'd been sailing for fifteen years by that point and I had never seen anything like it. I've lived on these islands for centuries now and I've still not seen anything like it. We had a steady and strong Northerly wind that was blowing us south. We were also carried by the currents and we were congratulating each other, really slapping each other on the back that we were making the southern trip so quickly. Sailors are superstitious and I was and am no different. We really believed that we were blessed and that God was pleased with our enterprise. Other ships heading back North to Europe were having to tack into the wind or head into port to take shelter while the wind blew itself out and al the while, we were stealing the distance on our nearest competitors.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we should have seen that that wind and that current were far from being heaven sent. Instead, they were sent by the Devil.

I have never seen anything like it. Ever. A vast, wall of cloud started to billow up. My captain was not stupid and we sensed that there was a storm. We tried to head for shore in an effort to find shelter but the wind and currents that had been our friend up until that point became our enemies. Not matter how hard we tried, we could not get away. We ran for the deeper water to make sure that we wouldn't be blown onto the shore instead but even in doing that, were heading for the storm.

It was a wall of cloud. Really a wall. Giant battlements ranged in the sky. Huge towers of black, forbidding cloud with the rumbling of Thunder underneath it. If almost felt like we were heading into battle, that the thunder was the sound of enemy warriors stamping their feet and cheering us on so that we could die. We saw flashes of lightening and every man on the ship knew that we were not going to survive that storm.

It was enough to remind you of the tales of childhood. Of the Gods of the sea with their tridents, fighting against the Gods of the air with their Lightening. I was terrified. We all were terrified and there was absolutely nothing we could do. We strapped everything down that we could and then tied ourselves to the various pieces of wood that we could find in the hope that these things would carry us to shore. At least they would float and we would be able to keep our heads above water. But there was no doubting it. We were heading into that wall of water and then we would be at the mercy of the wind, the rain and the ocean beneath us.

I remember that it got dark. As though a great curtain or blanket had covered the sun and we whimpered in fear. We might as well have been sailing into hell itself.

I remember little of the hours that transpired after that. I've never been in a battle although I have had to fight off pirates before. But I understand that it's a lot like that. You spend time fighting for your life and then you look up and you realise that the day has vanished and there's nothing you can do to bring it back. And that was what we were doing. Tying things down, untying other things so that the ropes didn't snap and decapitate some prone and helpless sailor. The moment where you see a ship-mate about to be swept over board and you know that if you untie yourself and go to his aid then you might be able to save him. But that there is then a danger that you will both go over the side.

The habit of obedience in this situation runs deep and in the same way that a Warrior must obey their lord. A sailor must obey their Captain. But this is a battle where there is no victory other than survival. You must simply fight and hope that when you come out the other end you are either on a ship that will still take you somewhere, or that you wash up on a beach that is survivable. Not some sand bar in the Mediterranean where there is no food or water.

Or that if you are going to drown, that you are not conscious when you do so. The best you can hope for is a quick death in those instances, to be brained by a falling spar or knocked unconscious by something before you drown. That's the best way. I had plenty of time to contemplate that during that storm.

We held on. We just held on. I have never seen waves larger, dwarfing our piddly little ship. The Captain fought it and I will say here and now that he was a brave man. He never stopped fighting, always doing his best to turn the ship into the wave so that we wouldn't capsize. Doing his best to make sure that we would live. In the long term, I may have done him wrong but he did right by me.

I have no idea how long we were thrown around by that storm. No idea. In that world there is no such thing as magic, or if there is, it is not a magic that any from this world would recognise. Otherwise I would have said that it was a magical storm.

It was also a constant thing. I have no way of proving to you how unusual that is. But I suspect that you all have at least a little bit of experience with spending time out of doors in all weathers. Rain is never constant. It comes as squalls and flurries. It ebbs and flows like the tide. But this was a constant downpour. A constant rain of daggers that cut and gouged into our bodies. It was awful.

Then we started to realise that it was getting colder. The rain turned from being rain into being sleet. Then the hailstones began to fall. Huge things. Each one big as the end of your thumb. Then it turned to snow. Driving snow, snow flurries being blown into your face and freezing your fingers. At first it had little effect, all it did was hit the decks or the rest of the crew and melt. But then it started to settle as the storm began, finally, to die down.

The wind was still high and the current was still strong. But now it was a case of simply riding the wind and the waves. The Captains compass went berserk and we had no idea where we were. We thought we knew which way was North but the Wind and the sea was still determined to carry us further and further South and The cloud cover meant that Navigation was impossible.

We were exhausted. We had no idea where we were and there was nothing we could do about that at the moment so we did what sailors and soldiers all over the world do when they don't have any better ideas.

We went to sleep.

We were no longer in any danger of the waves overturning us. We couldn't immediately see any land due to the cloud cover but we kept from unfurling the sails for that reason. If land or rocks really was just outside of sight then the wind through the sails could easily carry us to our deaths.

So we slept. Many of us went below where we could put together some hot coals and get some rest after the exertions of the storm. We were already on short rations as we had no idea where we were and had no idea how long it would take us to get anywhere where there might be some supplies to be had. But we had a biscuit or two each and a small swallow of rum before curling up and sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.

It's easy to admit now that we were making a mistake but there really was nothing else that could have been done. Tired was not the word for it. We couldn't see where we were, so what else were we going to do?

But the storm had carried us south. A long way south. Into uncharted waters, that was how far south we had come and we discovered that the same levels of cold that occur in the far north, also happen in the far south.

There was a small watch aloft, the Captain and a few of his hand-picked cronies who were more experienced and had sailed with the Captain that little bit longer. There had been the promise of a bonus for them at the ending of the voyage but I didn't begrudge them that. I judged that I was all but dead from the fatigue and went below. But we were woken from our stupor, rather savagely by the ringing of the Ship's bell and we rushed up on deck. I have no idea what we expected, some people picked up weapons, I picked up my crossbow and threw a satchel of bolts over my shoulder. Other men exclaimed excitedly that we might have sighted land or that the fog and mist was lifting.

We would all have been better off if we had caught up blankets or our fur lined cloaks.

What we had actually been brought up on deck to see was the first of the ice-bergs floating by.

Huge it was, a veritable island in and of itself and as is the law with all of these kinds of things, there was more underneath the water level than there was that we could see. But we all stood there, in utter silence as we watched the thing move past us.

But it wasn't silent. One of the things that they don't tell you about ice is that it moves, and when it moves, it makes these noises. It sings to you if you let it but it also cracks and howls with hate as well. We jumped the first time we heard that as the ice-berg seemed to growl at us. But we all stood there and watched as it floated past.

The Helmsman was a good man, good at what he did and he had spotted it early enough that he had managed to steer us round the thing. The mist, if anything, was thicker than it had been previously, ice crystals glittering as they hung there in the air which meant that he only had his best guess as to being able to return to the original heading. But that was the question that we all called out to the Captain. What do we do now?

If we kept going then there was the danger that we would run into the grasping fingers of the ice. The Captain argued that we were completely turned around. The compass wasn't working, swinging wildly from one extreme to the other and so how were we to choose our course. If we turned to any different heading, we could just as easily be heading into the ice as if we had just kept going the way that we had gone.

So we carried on going. The Captain set look outs and we carried on going. I was high up, climbing the rigging to stand in the crow's nest in an effort to see as far as possible with that movement. And I pulled my blankets even tighter around myself in a futile effort to stay warm. I had been one of the voices that had determined that we should turn around and do our best to return the way we came. I have no idea if I was right and the Captain was wrong. Now, I think it much more likely that we were doomed anyway and that there was little we could do one way or another to avoid our eventual fate.

There is a place beyond fear. A place beyond reason and determination. That place is resignation and I was becoming resigned to my fate. I hated the sea and at that point I was hating the uncertain nature of it. We were an experienced crew under an experienced Captain. The Ship was in good repair when we had set out, the ship not being too old that it was falling apart or too young and untested in such conditions. There was absolutely nothing that we could have done different. All the portents had been in our favour, everything had suggested that we were heading to a victory and a fortune in the ongoing trade wars. There was nothing that we could have done to predict or prepare for what happened and I was wallowing in my misery and self pity.

My luck had finally changed and now it was effecting me on the water, just as much as it was effecting me on land. I was in the process of deciding that I was cursed and was beginning to look around myself with fear in case any of my fellows decided that I was the Jonah and therefore responsible for our predicament.

The truth? I have no idea if we're being honest with you, although I suspect that our fate was already sealed. As we went on, it gradually became clear that we were heading for the ice. A solid line of ice against the horizon. The mist began to lift and we saw just what we were facing. We approached the wall of ice at an angled so at first we turned so that we would be travelling along the ice wall, looking for gaps or if there was a place to land and take on supplies.

Not as strange as you might think. There are tribes to the far North who are wrapped in fur so that they can make their living off selling fur and reindeer meat to passing sailors and we hoped that something similar might be available. We had given up on the thought of profit and just hoped that something in our hold would be good for the people who might be here. That they might find some value in a barrel of nails.

But it was deserted. The mist was lifting and all there was was snow and ice as far as we could see.

But things had already gone wrong. As we looked ahead now that the mist had lifted we could see that the wall of ice, whether it was ice on land or ice floating on the water, it didn't really matter which, the ice was coming out and would mean that we would have to turn. So we turned to the left, turned to port to, again, follow the line of ice. But always the line of ice seemed to be turning us to the left. Sharper too. We were having to turn further and further in order to avoid running into the ice.

The moment where we realised that we were trapped was a dark moment. I've never been on a ship that was closer to mutiny than I was there and then. Things might have gone bleak but for the first officer who simply asked what we might have done different if we had been in charge.

And he was right. Absolutely right. There was nothing that we could have done differently given what we knew at the time. When we passed the first ice-berg, we should have turned around directly. But it was impossible to know that at the time.

There were some times when there were breaks in the ice of course. Where the wall was made up of towers of ice rather than a solid mass. But the currents in the water meant that passage between those massive fortresses of frozen water was impossible. As we watched, trying to get up the nerve to take the plunge and to sail into the open maw of one or other of these openings, we heard them crash together, showering us in shards of the stuff and we moved on, looking for something easier, something wider and more open.

Every time. Every time we chose a gap to go for to try and get out of the mess that we were in we would turn the ship and be moving towards that gap with all the speed that we could muster only for the gap to snap closed just before we got there. Or, even worse, we would see a gap but the wind or the currents would be against us and we could get nowhere near it. No matter how hard we tried, we were nowhere and even worse than all of that, we knew it too.

We sailed in circles and as we did so, more and more ice was falling from the great shelf of ice... That was what we called the wall of ice, the great shelf, I have no idea what it's really called but if it turns out that we discovered it, that's what I'm going to have someone call it. The great Shelf. But parts of that were breaking and falling off and as the hours began to turn into days it became clear that what had once been a kind of bay of ice that had turned into a circle of ice, constantly shifting to keep us in the middle of it, instead it became a maze of ice that we were floating through.

And it was getting colder too. So cold that the water was beginning to freeze over which made our problems even worse. Three times we had to stop as our ship had gotten stuck in the ice and we needed to hack it free.

We were days about that. Days where we tried to find our way out of that labyrinth of ice. Days of us working to make it through. Although the mist had lifted, it was still so overcast that we couldn't see where we were going or what we were doing really. But having said that, it is also true that even if we could have seen where the sun was or been able to look up and recognise the stars and figure out where we were, we would not have had the time. We were too busy just surviving. Just surviving and making sure that we avoided the floating ice as we sailed, or avoided crashing into the walls of ice that would have been our deaths.

Food supplies began to run low. We were never short on water at that point, the ice made sure of that. Some of it was salt water but we found that if we melted the snow then we had plenty to drink from. But food was really beginning to be a problem. As well as the look outs and those men that worked the rigging and the steering, we had men out with fishing lines trying to find us some extra food.

We were unsuccessful.

Despair was beginning to have it's first hold on us.

Which was when the Albatross came.

Have you ever seen an Albatross, really seen it when it gets up close to a ship and decides that it's time to play? It's a majestic sight. It really is. It's also difficult to articulate just how... Impressive and huge those birds are until you see one up close and personal like. It was big, beautiful and power made manifest.

I hated the thing on sight.

It swept over the ship with a call that woke us from a our stupor before flying off in a direction that it appeared to pick at random. Then it seemed to call out to us as if berating us in some way before coming back and flying around us over the heads of the rest of the crew.

In the lack of anything better to do, we followed the bird. Any time we tried to deviate from that path it would come back, circle us, scream at us until it realised that we were turning to follow it again. It led us through the growing amounts of ice. We were now sailing through valleys and troughs of the stuff, as though it was guided by some kind of living thing that was trying to reach out, take hold and then throttle us to death with it's icy fingers. If that was the case and that that metaphor was correct, then we were no longer being grabbed at. We were the ant in the palm of the hand and the fingers were just coming together to crush us in an icy fist.

And the Albatross led us through the gaps in the fingers.

Our time became a long series of hours where we would discuss what the albatross might be. Whether it was the hand of God himself helping to guide us through the darkness towards the light. Whether it was some spirit of the sea or whether it might be the instrument of the devil himself leading us to our destruction and eventual painful death due to starvation or cold.

If it was this last option then I couldn't tell. I thought it kind of ridiculous to be honest as there must be far more reliable ways to get us all to die horribly. Or to sell our souls in order to get free from the ice.

My view was that the Albatross was playing with us. I thought it an animal that had found it's way to where we were and had sighted a plaything to toy with on the water. What it was doing there, I will never know as we saw no other birds in the air. Nor could it have been there to follow the food as we never caught any fish ourselves and we never saw it diving for anything that might provide it with sustenance. At first, a couple of fools tried to throw bits of food up in the air for it in thanks for it's help. But it was too big and too cumbersome to be able to catch the stuff and all that ended up happening was that we were throwing the food away.

But still the ice was closing in, getting closer and closer to us. It began to get dark as the ice kept the sun from reaching us. We started to make our peace with each other. Letters were written, those of us that could read and write were pressed into service in order to write letters, wills and writs to loved ones and family members. Messages that were rolled tightly before being pushed into bottles and cast over the side with more hopeless optimism than any kind of real belief that the tides would carry the words home.

So the ice was closing in, cutting us off from the sun which made us colder and colder until we were shivering.

And the Albatross led us to this cavern, this... cave-structure in the ice. At first we refused to go in. We were enclosed and we realised that we could not turn around and go back. There was little enough wind as it was and the capability to turn aroun was beyond us. We had been pulled towards this cavern and now, there was nothing left to do but to follow the Albatross.

I was furious. I remember being so angry. I had hated the Albatross from the first moment that I saw it anyway and now I saw what had happened as the final proof that we had been betrayed by the thing. It had led us here to our eventual destruction. It seemed ludicrous to me that there would be a way through the ice and as a result we were just going to end up running into an even deader end than we were in now.

I didn't mutiny. I didn't argue with the Captain. I will admit to making my feelings known but again. I was enough of a mariner to know that we had no choice other than to follow the Albatross into the cave. I was enough of a sailor to know that hindsight is perfect and that it is easy enough to look back and say that we should have done this or that we should have done that.

The truth was that we shouldn't have set out on this voyage in the first place. That was the truth that I came to believe and that the entire thing had been cursed from the beginning. We had been lured down here by prevailing winds and strong, beneficial seeming currents. Then we had been thrown here by the storm before being trapped here by the ice. Yes, there were decision points where the Captain could have gone left instead of right but he had no way to know that. I never resented the Captain for those decisions and I would want it noted that this was the case.

We entered the cavern. It was the strangest feeling and I swear that I saw this kind of strange, sickly green flash as we entered. It seemed to ripple through the ice almost like lightening.

There are always tales of the green flash that occurs either at dawn or at sunset. The new fangled scientists theorise that it is the sun shining through the waves as it rises and it sets. Others claim that it is the opening and closing of a portal or some other kind of phenomenon that we do not yet recognise. Such conversations are too much for me and I will not claim to even trying to understand them.

I had never seen one before and I startled at it before a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over me. At the time I took it for hunger. I was at that stage of hunger where I was actively looking forward to finding weevils in my ship's biscuit for the differences in texture and flavour that they provided. But now, I look back and wonder.

We found ourselves in a network of caverns. That first cavern was huge. I was once inside the Cathedral at Westminster when I sailed out of London docks for a while and I wanted to try and make my peace with God after another venture had fallen through. It reminded me of that. This vast, huge, awe-inspiring edifice. So tall that we easily fit the ship inside.

The sails had already been lifted as there was little to no point in trying for wind that wouldn't be there. Grappling hooks were brought out on deck in case we had to literally drag our way out of the caves or along corridors and things. Torches were brought out and braziers lit for light and warmth. But then another strange thing happened.

We found that we could see. The light was dim to be sure and it was no way near as easy to see as it would be at the height of midday. But what we assumed to be sunlight was shining through the ice in a myriad of colours. We could see rainbows in the ice as well as colours that hurt the eye and turned the stomach. There were noises in those caverns as well.

The logical mind will tell you that this was the ice moving around and settling in the changing temperatures and movements of water. This would only have been made worse by the fact that a ship full og warm bodied humans had entered into the domain of the ice. But there is only so far that the logical brain can take you before you start to become disbelieving of the logic. It was almost easier to believe that we were being sung to. As though by some huge, vast and ancient sea creature was serenading us into sleep.

It was quiet in those caves as well. We were sheltered from the wind but that meant that the only sound was the lapping of water against the hull and the sounds that the ice was making. The effect was oddly soporific and many of us just went to sleep. I didn't find the noises reassuring. To me, they sounded like the noises that a stomach can make while it's digesting something that is a little tougher. Like a cheap piece of steak. I was already beginning to get the feeling that I was a Jonah and that therefore, what was actually happening was that the Albatross had led us into the maw of some great beast and the sounds that we could hear were of that beast slowly digesting us.

It was the movement of the water that carried us along. There was occasional gusts of wind through cracks in the ice which meant that we still had to keep our sails unfurled after those first hours. Those same cracks would often also give us more light to see by.

Time seemed to blur. We seemed to be in there for days. Obviously we weren't but it felt like that. It never got dark in those caverns. Even when we could see that it was dark through the cracks in the ice, there was still that strange, glowing light in the middle of the ice. The light seeming to change away from the rainbow effects that we had had before and moving more towards the same, sickly green that I had seen when we first entered the cavern. Nor was that the only time that I had those flashes of green followed by vertigo and nausea either. It happened several times during the journey.

We had all retreated into ourselves by this point. We were ghosts moving about the ship, rarely talking, rarely doing anything really. We still worked because we were sailors but there was little else to do. We just watched the ice drift by slowly or watched the Albatross flying nearby as it led us through the caverns towards... whatever.

We had told ourselves that the bird knew what it was doing. That it would not allow itself to be trapped, so all we had to do was to follow the bird out and then we would find our way to freedom.

But that continued to fail to happen. We were still struggling through these caves of ice and we moved around like ghosts on our own ship.

(Freddie's note: There was a long pause here)

I don't know when it started. I really don't. I don't know when it started. I had chosen my spot just in front of the front mast and I would sit there cradling my cross-bow. I had so many half formed ideas about what to do. I suppose that I was losing my mind by this point. Just losing my mind and going slowly mad. I had become a creature of raw feeling and raw instinct. There was no conscious thought. No decision making process. My sense of touch had become numbed by the cold so I longed for extreme feelings.

It was almost as though some giant had placed their hands on either side of my head and were slowly squeezing on my skull. I took my crossbow apart, cleaned it, greased it and oiled it before placing it all back together. I sharpened my bolts obsessively as well, checking the fletchings for wear and tear. I honestly believe that I started this whole routine as a way of passing the time. It could, reliably, take several hours to do the entire job and do it properly and it was another way of marking the time.

I also remember being so very tired. As I say, I felt that we were being eaten alive by the ice and swallowed whole by some monster. I was starting at every noise and would often be jerked into consciousness by even someone coming near me.

I was not alone in this. Many of us were going mad by this point. We had been in the caverns for what felt like years and all the while that pressure was building.

And I hated with a passion that frightened me. I already hated the sea, hated ships and hated sailing. I hated myself for not being good at anything else and I hated the world for forcing me into a task that I despised in order to be able to do things as basic as being able to eat. I hated my crew-mates for the many and varied crimes that exist when you put thirty to fifty men together in such tight confines for prolonged periods of time and I hated the captain for making the mistakes that had got us into this mess in the first place. I hated the water for being cold and the ice for being solid. I hated the food that we ate and the rum laced water that we drank. I even came to hate God for putting me there.

But most of all, I hated the Albatross. The stupid thing all that way above us, gentle lazy movements that seemed to keep it aloft for so long. I hated how white it was. I hated the curve of it's beak that we could see whenever it deigned to come low enough for us to see it. I hated it's strength and I hated that it was still up there.

I hated it for leading us astray. I no longer believed that it was leading us to safety. I believed, with all my soul, that it was leading us deeper into more dangerous waters where we would eventually run aground on the ice and freeze to death. I hated it for not just getting the job done and letting us die here. I hated it for failing us. It had been full of promise that we would make it and take us to safety. I had so wanted to be proven wrong and to be shown that all was not bleak and ugly in the world. I wanted to believe in something. I wanted to know that this was going to happen and that we were going to make it out and now that bird had let us down.

Over the time, the pressure seemed to increase. I had a nigh constant headache and my rage was building. There was no outlet for it. Punching a ship-mate was beyond consideration and I rather felt that I would not be able to stop with a punch. It felt like my skin was too small and that it was stretched over too much body which was ironic because I had clearly been starving for days.

All the while, my eyes were fixed on the Albatross. I barely blinked. I only did so when it became necessary. When my eyes burned and hurt with the cold and the salt water in the air. I didn't look away to accept my meals and I didn't look away when people tried to talk to me. I just poured my hatred into that bird and I wished for some kind of outlet.

I so very badly wanted to die. I wanted to take a blade to my wrist to let the pressure out. I wanted to place the crossbow underneath my chin and pull the trigger so that the bold would travel through my skull from underneath my jaw and out the top of my head. That way all of that hate and anger would be released. But suicide is a sin and I could not do that.

So I watched the Albatross and all the time, my hatred grew.

It was like a physical thing. As though it was a fire that burned with in my chest and that was growing to destroy me and burn me into a cinder. I literally wept with it, gasped for air and choked on it as I struggled to breathe.

Then I rose to my feet. I calmly put my foot in my crossbow's stirrup and wound back the bow. Then I placed the bolt into the groove and brought the cross-bow to my shoulder.

It wasn't until that point that people realised what I was about to do. Some shouted that I should carry out the killing. Others begged me to stop but I heard none of them.

I sighted carefully and pulled the trigger.

My bolt flew from the bow and I have often wondered how life might have been different if I was a worse shot.

Just pulling the trigger was an act of release for all that pent up rage and hatred and I screamed as the bolt whistled out over the air. I screamed with such force and such savagery as I begged the bolt to strike true.

I am a very good shot when the shot matters and the Albatross had time to scream itself before it fell from the sky and landed at my feet. It's white breast rising and falling as it died with my steel bolt sticking out of it.

I killed the Albatross and I bellowed my victory to the heavens.

The other sailors got hold of me quickly after that. So swept up in the Euphoria was I that I didn't even notice when they took the crossbow off me and tied me to the mast.

Men screamed at me as to why I had killed their saviour. They were furious and it was only the intervention of the Captain that saved my life. He did order that the corpse of the Albatross be placed around my neck as the reminder of my crime.

I had killed the Albatross.

It was no crime. It was no murder. I killed our tormentor. I know this because soon after that, we got into open water when I was able to make my escape. I killed the Albatross and good riddance I say. It was just an animal, just a bird. It was leading us deeper into the ice and meant to kill us and I killed it first which led to us attaining our freedom. I owe them nothing and they owe my everything.

I killed the Albatross. If I had my time again, I would have murdered the fucking thing sooner. It was no angel sent from heaven to save us. It was a filthy, horrid, smelly beast. I know because they tied the thing round my neck and it stank, even before it started to rot.

I killed the Albatross. I'm glad I killed it. I would do it again. It was no crime to do so. It was my crossbow and I had every right to kill it. No orders had been given to preserve the thing's life and it was not a mutiny to do so.

I killed the Albatross and fuck you if you think I was wrong.