To this day, I remain convinced that if I had decided to go with Finnvald instead of Helfdan, then Svein and the rest would have been upset and a little bit angry. I think Ciri would have been, if anything, a little disappointed and that Kerrass would have been confused more than anything.
But Helfdan himself? I don't think he would have given a damn.
We set sail, Finnvald actually sailed with us that first day so that Helfdan could bring him up to speed on where we were, what we were doing and where we were going. He nodded carefully and asked a series of questions of Kerrass and Svein between them. He and Ciri shared an embrace as if of old friends with him making a dirty joke and Ciri laughing although with a certain edge to her laughter that suggested “Ok, that was kind of funny. And also, I will let you have that because we have known each other for a long time. So I will let you have that one. But any more jokes like that and I will cut your dick off. Just so we're clear.” I think he got the message. He certainly didn't make any more jokes of that nature during the time that I was there.
We camped that first night in a larger cove than we would have normally with the Wave-Serpent and the Storm Blade beached in the cove while the Sea Sword boasted an anchor and stayed out at sea under the guise of standing lookout. The concern being that a bigger group of ships would be more likely to attract the merchant attackers that we were beginning to fear.
It was the middle of the following day when the red smoke rose over the horizon. I was doing my best to sleep in the bottom of the Wave-Serpent. There is precious little to do aboard ship and I found that I struggled to do more than doze and read. Writing was out of the question but I could, at least, enjoy a book and have a snooze. I was struggling at that point though and although I was tired to the marrow of my bones, my brain was too full of thoughts and feelings for me to be easily able to drop off.
But on the other hand, there was more than a good chance that we were about to face an Ice Giant or three in a fight. It rather struck me that it would be wise to be well rested in advance of that. So I was doing my best to get some rest, even if sleep was impossible, when the look out called.
It was a curious kind of piercing whistle and it roused me from my blankets with speed. Ciri and Kerrass were already up and just about the entire crew moved to one side to see where the lookout was pointing. And there we saw it. A dark red pillar of billowing smoke like the finger of some great, dark God standing against the horizon.
I remember being surprised at the size of it. That analytical, scientific part of my mind that lives with me for most of my days. I remembered the plateau of the Skeleton Ship lookout tower and the relatively small pile of wood that was there. I remember looking at the column of smoke and thinking “Well there's no way that that small pile of wood could make that much smoke, they must be using a hell of a lot of oil.”
Which is true. That was literally what they were doing. But while I and everyone else on the Wave-Serpent and accompanying ships stood next to the rail and watched with horror as the smoke went straight up into the sky, ignoring the snow and the wind and everything else that was coming down, there was that small part of my brain that was wondering just how much oil it would take to produce that much smoke.
A slow kind of peace settled over the wave-Serpent. I don't really know why. One of those strange kinds of foibles of human nature I suppose. The wait was over now, the last expulsion of doubt and the last fall of the axe. There was no waiting, no wondering and no imagining of the things that were to come. They were on their way now and there was nothing that we could do to stop it.
The Skeleton Ship was coming.
Helfdan let us have a few minutes of staring up at the clouds before he called us back to whatever it was that we had been doing before then. Most men went back to their preparations. We were moving with the wind and moving quite steadily at that. Men went back to sharpening their weapons and repairing small damages to their armour in the sure knowledge that such things would very probably mean the difference between life and death.
For me, I sat on a bench and watched the smoke rise steadily into the sky until it went above the clouds and disappeared from view. The clouds that were heavy with snowfall. Eventually I pulled a blanket round my shoulders as I began to realise that I was shivering. Whether the final sighting of the ship meant that the temperature dropped, or whether it was just the knowledge of the coming horror that made me shiver I was not able to tell.
I was reminded of a similar feeling in Kalayn lands when we had watched the mist coming down off the mountains. When Chireadean, Rickard and myself had watched the slow tendrils form and begin to creep down the mountain side. It was a very similar feeling to that although I couldn't tell you why.
I found myself muttering the same lines that we had recounted that time “The ground will shake with their coming. Frost and mist shall be their herald and their hounds will play under their feet. Arrayed in black steel with sharp swords that glitter with ice. Terrible to behold as they herald the coming of winter. A winter that will never thaw. Their leader will come with a crown of ice and his face shall be as a skull. And where his blade strikes, the blood and the very marrow in the bones shall freeze. The worms in the ground shall shatter in the cold.”
“The Wild Hunt.” Ciri said as she sat next to me. “Not one of Dandilion's better works if you ask me.”
“I always preferred his account of your parent's love for each other.” I agreed.
Ciri smiled. “Storm dark hair and violet eyes that spoke of lightening.” She quoted. “A beauty and a wit so sharp that it would cut the hand that tries to adore it.”
“Did that beauty ever cut Dandelion?” I wondered. It was often a thought among some of my fellows that Dandelion might have been jealous of his friend's love for the Sorceress.
“No I don't think so. If they had met before Dandelion had known about Dad's love for her, then he might have had a go and I doubt he would have turned down a roll in the hay. But he wouldn't have gone anywhere near that after Geralt met her. He would not have done that to his friend. For all his pretences, Dandilion is cleverer than he looks and behaves especially when it comes to women.”
“Are you sure about that. He does occasionally seem to choose the worst possible choice out of all of the options offered to him.”
“Ah, you are talking about his self-loathing. He is getting better with that though. Father says that he is growing up and even settling down. I think it would be fairer to say that he is getting over himself a bit.”
We sat together for a while. “You've seen the Skeleton Ship before haven't you?” I asked her.
“Yes.” She admitted after a while.
“What's it like?”
She shook her head. “I saw it as it passed through the harbour. My understanding is that it is a very different beast in the harbour than it is when it sails the island. Uncle Crach once told me that it is the difference between the wild and angry cat protecting her babies in the wild, versus the calm and tamed cat that comes into the Kitchen in the evening for a bit of bacon or chicken.” She sighed. “If you are really wondering whether or not you should be afraid? Then I would say that you should be.”
“Oh, I knew that.” I told her. “But how afraid. That's the question I need the answer to really.”
She sighed again as she thought about this. “Pretty fucking afraid I think.” She told me.
For the rest of that day, there was little to do other than to just sit and watch the smoke climb ever higher into the sky. It was hypnotic, watching a bulge that started forming as a little billow of smoke become bigger and bigger until it eventually rose beyond sight. But it was a good way to take my mind off the fact that we seemed to be sailing in a straight line towards the smoke itself. Which meant that we were sailing in a straight line towards the skeleton ship in the first place.
We slept on a small island. Bigger than the one that we had used the last time that we were in these waters which was when we met the rest of Finnvald's crew. I tried really hard to like them but there was a certain amount of....
It was like I had lost the intimacy of the entire thing. It was getting too big for me and becoming unwieldy in a way that I did not like. The closest thing I can think of to this feeling was from when I was a student living in Oxenfurt. A couple of friends and I hadn't seen each other in a while having been distracted by work and women and so we had resolved to get together to drink an unseemly amount of alcohol and to generally bitch and moan to each other until we decided that we had put the world to rights.
I had been really looking forward to it.
Things started off well, sitting and drinking in our favourite watering hole until the place started tog et busier and busier until we were screaming at each other so that the other people could hear what we were saying.
So we went to a different pub. This was a mistake.
Because some other friends found us there. Suddenly, a night drinking with two of my closest friends was a night drinking with two of my closest friends plus another two people who I liked but didn't know very well. Then they attracted three more people. Then someone commented that there weren't any women in the growing group of people and so some were found and enticed over to our table with the promise of free drinks. Then they brought their friends and boyfriends and suddenly it was this whole thing that had gotten out of hand when all I really wanted to do was to sit and have a good old fashioned gossip with my best friends.
I knew Helfdan and although, to say that I liked him would have been a bit extreme, I respected and trusted him. I certainly liked Svein and his brothers, Ivar, Thorvald, Sigurd and the rest were easily becoming dear to me and with a remarkable amount of speed. But now there was another sixty men here. More names to learn. More stories to hear. But now it was beginning to break down. Whereas before we would all gather round one fire to tell our stories and things, this was now impractical and we had to spread around separate fires. I would have been welcome at all of those fires, but somehow, I didn't want to join any group.
They were strategising anyway and I was struggling to get my mind to focus on the details.
It turns out that, like many of the islands of Skellige, Undvik is built around a mountain that rises high in the sky. This mountain itself was the last bastion of the ice giants before the Human and Vodyanoi forces forced them back into their own realms. The thing that the Priestesses of Freya had told us was that there was a cave in the side of the mountain that was, according to legend, the portal that you would take if you wanted to cross over into the realm of the Ice-giants.
I had wondered how anyone knew this but no-one could tell me that. Nor could they tell me how many giants there might be in this cave, or why any of the giants hadn't invaded Undvik like the previous Ice giant had.
There were a lot of unanswered questions going on and I was happy with none of them. But the prospect of speaking to the Vodyanoi had filled the Skelligans with terror and there was, to my mind, even less likelihood that searching elven ruins would produce results so.... here we were.
Kunnr was consulted as, having lived on Undvik, he had the most knowledge of the local terrain. He informed us that the cave that the Priestesses had told us about was on the Northern part of the island. Yes, the mountain and cliff face there was not as high as it was on other parts of the island but it was not small. The beach was difficult to reach by land so that when men and women of Clan Tordarroch went down to the beach to hunt for Crabs and pull in driftwood, they would be taken there by smaller fishing ships that would drop them off and then pick them up again before the turn of the tide. Otherwise, there was little or no reason that anyone would go there.
He had no knowledge of the cave in question although he could lead us to the part of the beach that the map was marked with to get to the cave in question.
The point was talked around for a long time but eventually it was decided that there was no way we could decide how we were going to approach the situation until we knew what the situation actually looked like.
It took everyone far too long to come to that realisation if you ask me, but we all went to bed.
The smoke continued to rise the following day. Towards the end of the day we started to see small points of light starting to appear on the islands further to the North. They were like twinkling stars that we could only just see through the haze of cold coming from the sea.
“Good,” was Helfdan's assessment of this. “That means that the ship is heading North.”
Kerrass almost laughed at that. “Where did the priestesses say that the rendezvous with the Vodyanoi would be if this meeting with the Ice giants doesn't work?”
“To the North.” Svein was also grinning.
“So what we're saying is.” Ciri joined in the graveyard humour. “This had better work.”
“In my experience,” Kerrass went on. “Such comments are like prayers.”
“I didn't take you for being superstitious.” Svein teased.
“I'm not. But in my experience. Comments like that are invitations for the Gods to play with us.”
“That might be true.” Svein countered. “But when Gods play with mortals, it nearly always means that life is going to be interesting.”
“You say that like it's a good thing.” Helfdan finally joined back in. “Having said that. It is still good that the ship is going north. It means that we can focus on the giants rather than worrying about setting lookouts to be careful of where the ship is. As for the Vodyanoi question? We can worry about that problem when we get to it.”
“That is less than entirely encouraging.” Ciri told him.
There were some other developments over the course of that day as well. Despite the pending arrival of the Skeleton Ship, there were still plenty of sails on the horizon and more than one of them were coming up behind us. Helfdan didn't seem too worried about it and neither did Finnvald but it was taking all of my self-control to not utterly flip my top over this development. It was all getting a bit much and as a result I was slowly sinking into a slump. There was just something so overwhelming about the entire situation.
But there was more to it than that. A sensible person would have told Helfdan that enough was enough and that we should all have turned for home by this point. That we should head for safety.
Giants, Vodyanoi, A spectral ship, unknown, unlooked for friends and the very real possibility of pirates comiing up behind us. All the while a cold that was already meaning that we had to protect ourselves from the elements and a promise that that same cold was only going to get colder.
But try as I might, I could not bring myself to go and tell Helfdan to turn for home. Nor could I tell Kerrass and Ciri to give up or anything else that I genuinely wanted to do. But I just couldn't.
Ciri was also struggling with the passage through the waters off the northern coast of Undvik. She had wrapped herself in her hooded cloak while deliberately sitting with her back to the Northwestern tip of the island. There is a strange kind of headland on the Northwestern point of Undvik which forms a kind of land bridge over towards an island. On this tall, craggy and inhospitable place is a lighthouse like construction but calling it that is vastly underselling it.
The tower is called the Tor Gvalch'ca which translates from the Elven tongue to mean “Tower of the Falcon” although there is an emphasis in the original word which specifies that the Falcon is a female. I have no idea why and the Skelligans around the place don't seem to have any kinds of better idea. Instead they avoid the place and a regular story is told that the place is haunted by a beautiful woman in a long white dress that sucks the souls out of any man that goes near it.
Kerrass had heard the story before and scoffed at it telling me that spectre's don't do that when they appear as described and if they were doing anything else, then the locals would know about it. He guessed that the locals had invented a story in order to keep children from climbing over the forbidding, loose, unstable and otherwise dangerous looking structure.
He was probably right. But neither did this entirely explain the profound effect that it had on Ciri. She was obviously miserable and withdrawing into herself. Of all people it was Helfdan that offered a solution to her mood.
I had tried to talk to Ciri a couple of times but she wasn't going for it, at best, I was getting one or two word answers. I had wandered to the back of the ship to have a look at the pursuing sails when Helfdan spoke, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Is the Swallow alright?” He asked.
“What?”
He repeated his question without any kind of inflection that would suggest that he was frustrated at anything.
I considered the matter. Some men were rowing, others were playing at dice and cards while still more were just sitting around and talking. Kerrass was sat grinding some herbs with his Mortar and pestle.
Ciri, alone, was doing nothing. Just sat there with hunched shoulders.
“No.” I answered. “I don't know what's wrong and she won't tell me but... No she's not alright.”
Helfdan nodded. Glanced up at the sail for a moment.
He had started to sweat.
“Would you....” He blew the rest of his breath out of his mouth and gritted his teeth. Then he took another deep breath. “Would you ask her to come back up here?”
“Ummm.”
“I...uhhh....” He was breathing heavily before he had another try. “I might be able to help. Tell her that I have a question for her.”
I thought about it for a moment before shrugging.
Ciri looked at me with a strange haunted look. “He wants what?”
“He has a question for you.”
Ciri took a deep breath of her own and put her hand up to cup her forehead for a moment. She looked.... vacant.
“Fine.” She got up and stomped to the back of the boat. “WHAT?” She demanded of Helfdan.
He looked startled as though she had slapped him.
Ciri sighed and wiped her face with her gloved hands. “I'm sorry Helfdan....sorry.... Lord Helfdan. What do you..... What can I do for you?”
Helfdan waited a second. I thought he was gritting his teeth but he hid it well.
“I was....” A tremor shook him. “I was wondering if you wanted to steer for a bit.”
Ciri stared at him. “I thought you had a question for me.”
“I do.” He countered before another shudder shook him. “I wanted to ask if you wanted to take the tiller for a while?”
Ciri was surprised. I certainly was.
“I thought....” She swallowed. I had a sudden feeling that I was intruding. “I thought that women weren't allowed to crew a ship.”
Helfdan shrugged. “You are the Swallow. Unless I misremember all the things you used to tell us. You are the heiress of Ard Skellig and An Skellig.” He smiled slightly. “Surely the supersitition doesn't apply to you.”
“I ummm.” She grinned suddenly. “I can sail small ships but....”
“Then I shall teach you.” Helfdan had also relaxed, suddenly seeming more comfortable in his own skin.
I stood and watched for a while. Helfdan was a good teacher. He struggled to talk to her whenever he was supposed to talk about anything other than the sailing of his ship and I noticed that he wasn't looking at her, even more so than he avoided looking at anyone else. But I also sensed that there was a certain amount of bonding going on.
She was still sailing when Kerrass and I finished our conversation.
“So do you think he's getting sweet on her?” Kerrass asked me after our conversation had faltered a little bit.
“Who?”
He gestured towards the back of the ship with a nod.
I turned to look. “Nah, I don't think so. She's not been doing well whenever we've come past Undvik and I reckon he's doing his best to take her mind off things.”
“Good, it wouldn't do us any good at all if he started developing a crush on Ciri.”
“Not going to happen.” Svein told us as he approached. “Sorry, couldn't help but over hear. That man has had his heart set on one woman since they were all little.”
“Fair enough.” Kerrass agreed. “Is it time?”
“I do believe it is.”
Kerrass stood up and moved to the front of the ship with Svein as we were getting closer to the shore. I stood and started putting on my armour.
“Alright, lads, let's all listen to the Witcher now?”
“Here it is.” Kerrass began. “Ice Giants are tough bastards. There skin is tougher than old leather and their muscles are like knotted steel. If you try and hit one with the sharpest sword or the heaviest axe then all you're going to be doing is dulling your blades.”
The Wave-Serpent crested a wave and crashed back into the water.
“When arrows don't bounce off, they are unlikely to penetrate deep enough to cause any kind of damage and hammers are just as harmful as a good heavy slap to them. Yes, they have tender areas and their balls are generally in the same place that a human keeps his....”
“What about Giant women?” Kar called.
“Still looking for a wife, brother mine?” Svein yelled at him to much hilarity.
“Hey, if she's willing, why not? Two giant tits as big as my head, what's not to love?” Kar protested.
There was more laughter and more than one nervous glance to where Ciri was wrestling with the tiller.
“No-one in living memory has seen an Ice-giants daughter.” Kerrass told us. “They are said to exist and there are records of such. But you should be careful. If such a creature comes forth then you should be careful. They are said to have long dark hair, pale skin and are beautiful enough to drive men wild.”
“Sounds like your sister Kunnr.”
“Ha ha haaaaaaa, go fuck yourself.”
“Seriously though.” Kerrass interrupted the banter. “They are drawn to the warmth of a human male, or an Elf or Dwarf or.... But to love them is to be frozen to the point of shattering. As I say, there hasn't been one seen since well before landing. But rumour has it that they are the brains of the outfit. They appear to be human sized in stature and can use a form of magic that is to do with ice and cold. We should pray that we only meet the male Ice giants.”
The ship started to lift in the water again as we came to the top of another swell.
“OARS.” Ciri called in a shrill voice from the back of the boat. I took the opportunity to glance back at her. She was stood in an almost identical posture to how Helfdan himself stood at the tiller. She was slighter than the man though so her posture was a little wider and I thought she had a little tighter a grip of the tiller. She was grinning fiercely and I thought I could hear her laughing but the wind was carrying it away from me. Helfdan was next to her and I guessed that he had just whispered something in her ear but he was now putting on his own chain-mail and strapping his own wrist guards into place.
“The first mistake,” Kerrass went on, “when dealing with Ice giants, or any kind of monster really, is to assume that they are stupid because they can't speak. Their mouths are different to ours is all. And from Kunnr's story, we know that they are far more intelligent than we give them credit for. So yes. They do have veins and arteries and things that you can cut that will cause them pain. But they know that too and they are skilled at armouring themselves and protecting themselves using whatever is lying around.”
There was another crash as we crested a wave again. I had to hold onto a rope to keep my feet.
“Don't even try to block.” Kerrass carried on his lecture. “It won't work, a single blow from a fist, club or whatever weapons that they wield will shatter shields, break limbs and make an impact hard enough to break your ribs through the rest of your body. Speed and mobility is best. Watch for your opening and strike fast and true.”
The men growled. Everyone was putting on armour now, shrugging on mail, strapping weapons and shields into place. Placing helms on heads and helping each other.
“Stay calm.” Kerrass told us. Raising his voice over the sounds of the waves and the spray. “Take your time. The more we can frustrate him and the angrier he gets, the more careless the giant will become. Which means the more openings for us.”
“Sounds like Haakon.” Someone joked, I thought it was Thorvald and the men laughed with him as Haakon stood and glared about him. He looked terrifying to me and I wouldn't have wanted to make jokes at his expense.
Armoured men traded places with the unarmoured ones that were working at the oars.
“Now for the good news.” Svein bellowed. “Our Witcher friend has not been idle since Hindersfjall. Unlike the rest of his kin.”
There was some more jeering from the other men who were now putting their own armour on. The Undvik coast was getting closer now. The oars were helping.
“There are three bottles coming round that are filled with a type of oil that is poisonous to creatures like the ice giants.” Kerrass called. “Take a cloth and smear it into your weapons. Do so in the same way that you would use weapon oil. You're looking for a slightly grey tinge to the metal. Do not be stingy, there is plenty.”
“How does it work?” I thought it was Perrin that called the question.
“It gets complicated.” Kerrass said.
“Which means he doesn't know.” Ivar cracked to more laughter.
Kerrass' eyebrow rose. “Ice giants are magical creatures. The complex chemical and magical reactions that are created in the mixing of the herbs and substances together gives off a magical effect which disrupts the magic field that gives the Ice giants their strange and exaggerated toughness...”
“Alright,” Ivar was laughing with the rest. “I take the point.”
“I can talk about the magical fields interacting and working to destroy each other if you wish.” Kerrass went on. “It's to do with the individual makeup of the disparate...”
This time the laughter was aimed at Ivar who held his hands up to acknowledge the fact that Kerrass had won. But he remained standing, not giving up the ground. “Does it work for those of us that use clubs?”
“And hammers?” Ursa called from where he was working on one of the oars.
“It does.” Kerrass told them. “But that's the bit I don't know how it works so don't ask me how that bit happens.” There was a bit more laughter. “But don't do anything as stupid as trying to confirm the kill. All of the other stuff still applies. Same as it would with a human. Remember that the limbs work the same way. Back of the knee, ankles, elbows. They have a rib cage and although the belly will be covered in muscle, there are plenty of other ways to get in to serious internal organs that will have a much more profound effect. But don't stay still. Ever.”
“Speed, power and surety are our best weapons here. Keep your temper.”
“Now, there is another problem which is the harpies.”
“What?” Ivar asked.
“Ice Giants sometimes have the power to bend lesser creatures to their will. As I say, it is a mistake to think that these things are stupid. They couldn't do that if there wasn't something serious going on in their skull. They can control Necrophages and, Siryns and Harpies. So Archers should watch the skies. Finnvald and his crew will be covering us for that. But the job of taking out the giants will be ours.”
The men of the Wave-Serpent growled their approval.
“Remember that we want one alive.” Svein reminded them all. “At least one. And we will be trying to talk first.” I wondered if it was my imagination that said that more than one person looked at Kunnr when they said that. “But if a fight starts. We finish it.”
The crew roared at that. One or two men clashing their weapons against their shields as they gave throat to their thirst for combat.
“But caution.” Kerrass told them. “Strike hard, strike fast. Let Freddie, Ci.... the Swallow, or myself lead.”
My head jerked up. I was expecting to stay back. I normally end up out the way. Kerrass was looking at me, grinning in that horrible way that he gets, the smile of a cat that spies the mouse. “And Good hunting.”
This time the crew really did roar.
“All hands to the oars.” Ciri called. Both she and Helfdan were leaning into the tiller now, both of them fighting to keep the ship steady.
I desperately wanted to help but experience has taught me that I know almost literally nothing about physical labour and that it's better for everyone if I just stay out of the way and let the professionals get on with it. I held onto the rope and watched the shore get closer. The water seemed different to my eyes. Thick and a little soupy but there was a ship on our right and another on our left. Oars dipping into and out of the water in a strange unison. It was like a dance.
The water stung in my eyes and on my skin. The bitter cold of it was like a thousand tiny needles digging into my skin. But it was actually far from unpleasant.
It took me a moment to realise it but the crew of all three ships were chanting. Not quite together but they were the same words even though I didn't understand them. The oars settled into a cadence and the Wave-Serpent leapt forwards like a hound scenting the pray.
Ursa stood at the head of the ship, standing on the prow and to my astonishment, he started to dance. He was singing. The madness was contagious and I found that I was laughing.
Svein was next to me and straightened from vigorously rubbing his weapons with the oily rag. Then he stood up and took a deep breath.
“Gods.” He bellowed. “I live for this.” Laughing he turned and clapped Kerrass on the shoulder, sending the Witcher staggering into the ship rail. Then he spun and pulled me into a fierce embrace. “Going off to face the Ice Giants. There's a thing that I get to tell the Grand children. Alongside a northern lord, a Witcher and the Empress of the World. I, Svein the hard hand, son of Magden, warlord of the Black Boar, go to face the Ice Giants.”
He shook me. “Thank you my friend. Thank you.”
He laughed again and he was not alone.
Sigurd stood from his oar to be replaced by a grinning Svein and ran to the side of the ship where he vaulted the rail. I ran after him to see him land on one of the oars. Then he started to run, up and down the oars as they rippled. He was laughing.
Thorvald was stood in the middle of the deck, arms wide and palm upwards. It was then that I realised what was happening. These men were praying.
It was Ivar's turn. “SEEM ME HEMDALL. SEE ME, YOUR SERVANT. I SAIL TO WAAAAARRRRRRR.”
More men would stand to be replaced by those other men that had made their prayers and their offerings. I saw a man cut his palm and squeeze the blood over the side. I saw another man place his axe on the deck and start to dance around it.
Kerrass and I stood and watched as the madness seemed to consume the men of the Wave-Serpent.
I turned to look at Helfdan who was watching the sail, alternating between the sail and the shore. That was his prayer.
Ciri was next to him, wild eyed, wild hair and with a wild grin.
I was still laughing.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Then as the shore approached. Things calmed and Svein moved to the front.
“WE ARE THE CREW OF THE WAVE-SERPENT.”
“ROOS.” The men roared back at him.
“WE ARE THE WARRIORS OF THE BLACK BOAR.”
“ROOS.”
“WE ARE THE STRONGEST.”
“ROOS.”
“THE MOST DARING.”
“ROOS.” Shields and weapons were clashing.
“AND THE MOST FUCKING TERRIFYING RAIDERS THAT SAIL THE SEAS.”
“ROOS.” Of course I chanted with them. I would defy anyone standing there to not roar their approval.
“And if today should be our day.” Svein said, quieter. “Then at least we die with HONOUR.”
“ROOS.”
“WITH COURAGE.”
“ROOS.”
“WITH BLADES IN OUR HANDS.”
“ROOS.”
“AND FRIENDS AT OUR SIDES.”
“ROOS.”
There was another pause as Svein turned to look at the shore. There were harpies circling and more rising to meet them.
“Well lads,” Svein went on. “It would seem that we're expected. Proud of you boys.” He grinned. “Vilka är vi?” He asked.
”VAG ORM,” They yelled back.
“Vilka ar vi?” He asked again.
“VAG ORM,” I have no idea what it meant but I bellowed along with them.
“VILKA AR VI?” He asked again.”
“VAG ORM.”
Then Svein held his arms aloft and we roared until the heavens themselves shook with the thunder.
“BRACE.” Ciri called, Helfdan's voice with it.
And we hit the sand.
And we did so hard. I don't know why I had expected anything different. I had beached in the Wave-Serpent before but this seemed to have something extra. Normally the Wave-Serpent is beached with the bare minimum of coverage. She is driven ashore enough so that the crossing tides in the coves and beaches that we use don't tear her apart. But also it's a balancing act because sooner or later the ship needs to go back out to sea and it's preferable that we are able to do that with the minimum effort possible.
But this time we went on hard. I staggered, again, catching hold of a rope to keep myself from falling over the side. The only difference between the fates was that this time I would break my own fool neck rather than drowning or freezing to death.
Then the Wave-Serpent roared again. But this was somehow louder, more primal and with much more fear and anger in it. It was as though the ship and the crew itself were one being and I felt myself being swept up into the madness of it.
Svein alone seemed to keep his head. Like a huge priest and Lord of battle he was snapping orders, physically taking hold of men and pushing them where he needed them to go.
I know that Ursa was the first man off the ship. Huge and solid in his armour with the Bear's head on top of his helm, huge shield raised, Sigurd went over the other side charging forward, those two men as the bulwark against assault and the other men followed. Haakon and Ivar were next with their axe and Club swinging respectively followed by more and more as we charged down the ship and leapt over the side.
I still wasn't on the beach and I was already out of breath with all the screaming. I had been pushed back and pushed back with the shield men and hardened warriors going first.
One man looked at me, saw my face and laughed. He said something that I did not recognise and then he leapt over the side himself.
Kerrass was in front of me and he went over and I knew that it was my turn next.
I was terrified. I tried not to think about the cold sand or the cold water that waited for me below. Nor did I think about the very real possibilities of twisting my ankle or breaking my leg or something. I just jumped. One hand holding my spear and the other used to help me vault over the side.
The moment of terror as I fell before the awful impact. But the impact was not as bad as what came next. Then there was the cold of the water as it splashed over my boots. I was no more than ankle deep. Knee deep with a swell but the pain was awful. It was as though my feet and legs were gripped in a vice. But that pain gave me an energy.
Because then it made me angry.
The Harpies were already screaming and we saw a group of them flying towards us, the front most of them already dipping to attack the men already on the beach. A man, I have no idea who it was although they carried a shield so I know it wasn't Kerrass, grabbed me and propelled me roughly towards where the rest of the men were getting into their formation. They had formed a Wedge in the sand with shields on the outside. I was thrown into the back of the formation where I found Kerrass and those men that didn't normally carry shields. I saw Perrin there, ducking and weaving like a fist fighter, poking his head out of cover looking for a target. Like lightening I saw him draw, knock an arrow before firing it at some target.
Rickard would have disapproved of his form but I saw a harpy fall from the formation.
Perrin was not alone and other arrows started to fly and the group of harpies fell back.
Then we were moving. Up the beach and away from the spray.
“CLOSE UP.” Svein roared over the din. His voice distorted and rough. Other men took up the cry and we were pushed closer together.
“CLOSE THOSE GAPS.” Svein roared again.
I could no longer see. Men were putting shields over our heads. Helfdan was behind me, Ciri and Kerrass were there.
“Here they come.” Someone called.
“HALT. I SAID HALT, DAMN YOU.” Svein bellowed. I could hear a sound like rain on a tent roof and the rushing of wind. We stumbled to a halt. I was cold, tired and I wanted to hit something. Ciri turned to me grinned with a wild look in her eyes. Not for the first time I thought of those stories of her as the mad, blood crazed terror of the Nilfgaardian roads when she had gone by the name of Falka.
“CLOSE UP.”
Kerrass forced his way through the formation to peek between the gaps of shields. Svein swapped places with him to check on what was going on at the rear and to tug men into place. I felt, rather than heard, Kerrass' voice.
“That's a lot of harpies.” He muttered to himself.
“BRACE.” Not Svein's voice this time. Similar though and I wondered what it meant but then I saw the warriors, putting their shoulders to the shields, spreading their legs wider. Their expressions grim.
“BRACE.”
I've never heard a sound like it. Not ever. I know that occasionally I am given to the over use of superlatives but I have never heard a sound like it. I've been sat here trying to think of what it was like so that I cup put the terms across in ways so that my readers can quite come to understand the awesome and terrible impact of that noise and about how it echoes in nightmares. But it was like nothing else.
It was the sound of harpies hitting shields. I have no idea how many Harpies. But there were thirty men of the crew and it felt like hundreds. Our formation was tiny. It was as though some giant hand had crafted the harpies into a spear and hurled it at us. Some harpies just flew at us as hard as they could. Others landed on sheilds and started to tug at them in an effort to disrupt the formation.
Ciri was laughing. She had drawn the crossbow that I had given her in a much more civilised place and shot out one of the gaps that was opened. Then she spun and fired through another gap.
“Goddess, but I've missed this.” She told me as she knelt to begin reloading the bow.
Kerrass was doing a similar thing with his silver sword. A gap would form and he would thrust. Lightening fast. He had taken a potion, his skin paler than normal but his movements were so quick as to barely be visible.
Others were following their example. But the weapons had been prepared for giants and we might as well have just been giving them a rather nasty shove.
The noise was unbelievable. Painful even, at the sound of claws dragging across metal rims and the tearing of wood.
We couldn't last. Heroes though we were. Every single one of us. Our luck had to change and it began to. One man thrust his spear out through a hole and a harpy grabbed the spear and pulled. Out of reflex and sheer training, the warrior did his best to hold onto the weapon when the best thing to do was very probably to let go. Instead, he was lifted up to crash into the shields over head, opening up the top of the formation. By the time he realised was happening he was already out of formation and flying away. He dropped and we heard screaming for a long time.
Another man got physically pulled by the shield. Harpies have hook like claws and one man was unfortunate enough to have had a harpy grab hold of his shield and begin to pull. Just sheer brute force as they tried to pull him off his feet. He was strapped into his shield. A loose shield is a gap that an enemy can exploit and so those shield straps were held on tightly. And he was pulled out.
Realising what was happening he dropped his axe and drew a dagger in an effort to cut himself free. But to no avail. He was already off balance and that gap meant that more of the flying, screeching horrors could get a hold. He was pulled out of the group and the harpies started to tear him apart.
But we couldn't move. Pressed in on all sides by sheer weight of numbers. A storm of claws and teeth and wings battering away at our defences.
But then the other ships arrived as the harpies attacked us, the two ships that Finnvald had brought beached with their warriors dismounting and the Skelligan arrows started to fly.
It was like a great hand had been conjured up and swept our enemies out of the way. The release of pressure was incredible.
“Follow me lads.” The formation broke and we were running. Men stamping on the heads or properly leaning on the bodies of fallen Harpies as we moved towards the cave that was our target. We had come in off centre and needed to run along the beach a bit before we could start to move in along the gully that would lead to the opening.
We could see the Harpies in a great black cloud against the grey sky. As I looked, I realised that it was raining and wondered, in that small part of me that is always horrified at the need for violence, how long it had been since we disembarked from the Wave-Serpent.
The swarm of Harpies was like a vast cloud if insects. The kind of thing that you see over the corn fields in the distance before the birds descend upon them. Or hovering above the lake in the evening. The cloud bulged and rippled. I thought I could see Siryn's in the midst of the cloud as well. At first there was a bulge that was heading for the archers who were moving up the beach now in order to support us in the combat that we were expecting.
But some will held them back. They rippled, pulled back and then they spun and dived towards us again. A great arrow of massed, writing tails and wings, led by a huge Siryn with her lizard eyes wide and teeth bare.
This time we met them in a wall. The shields formed in front of me and I was pushed back. Instead, I found a hole and pushed my spear through, standing on the end to brace against the impact.
The arrow of monsters shook as the arrows of our allies ripped into their flanks sending them tumbling out of the sky. Just the impact was enough to send them tumbling, even if the non-silver arrows actually did no damage at all, it was still enough to send the flying creatures tumbling out of the sky.
So it was a reduced attack that came at us this time, Kerrass stepped out and around the wall, Ciri was with him. They lifted their crossbows and fired at the huge Siryn that led the attack. They must have hit because the awful creature just plummeted down face first into the sand and loose pebbles, her inertia gouging a furrow into the dirt.
Ciri vanished in a green flash and reappeared over the things body, her sword flashing and the head came clear. Kerrass had reloaded his bow and shot down another Harpy that was diving to attack the Empress before she vanished again to stand next to the Witcher who drew his own silver sword that flashed.
Then the pair of them started to move, swords cutting patterns in the sky. Bewildering, dizzying in their brilliance and I started to see bits of monster fall away from them.
But then I had no time left as I had to start worrying for our own survival as although the arrow of harpies had been blunted, it had become a fist that struck us plum in the middle.
I felt an impact on my spear and had to fight to keep it upright. But the swarm was less organised now and if they had been human opponents I would have said that they were tiring.
The attacks were less organised now. Small groups of harpies were breaking off from the greater swarm and darting this way and that way. If a greater consciousness was indeed controlling them, then I would have been forced to guess that that consciousness was now asleep, or dead. I hoped that it was dead.
It felt like a respite and I was suddenly really tired, the urge to lean on my spear was too much for me to overcome. My feet felt as though they were made of metal and I was sucking air into my lungs enough to make my throat burn. Svein ordered a rotation of the shields. That we should take on some water and food if we could.
“Drink.” Someone ordered, passing my a water skin. “It helps.” I looked up into Helfdan's face. The bastard wasn't even breathing that hard, chewing on a piece of meat. “You once wrote that you've never been in a big battle before, is that still the case?”
I thought about it, taking huge, gulping breaths between small swallows. I mistimed it and started coughing and was forced to nod.
“Fights,” I spluttered, “Skirmishes. Nothing that would fulfil the term “Battle” in my head.”
The water really was helping and I was thirsty.
“So how are you finding your first one then.” He helped me back to my feet. I couldn't remember sitting down.
“Is this a battle?”
He thought about that for a moment, ignoring the harpies that were still flapping around overhead.
“I think so. Nearly a hundred people on our side. Several hundred on theirs. So far. Sounds like a battle to me.”
“There doesn't seem enough people to be a battle.”
“You continental types. You think of things like “Sodden” and “Brenna” as being battles. Thousands of men and women on each side. But the truth is that you don't need that many people for a battle. We planned this, we executed a plan and now we will follow through on it.”
He was looking off to one side as he said all of this. I followed his line of sight and saw that he was looking at that place on the beach where Finnvald's banner was flying.
Yes, he had a banner.
Helfdan did not bother with one. I suspect that this says something about both men but for the life of me I could not tell you what that something is. Some kind of peculiarity to Skelligans I suspect. There is also a small part of me that remembers Ciri's statement in the halls of Toussaint. That being that in that time and place, if you needed to ask which person was the Empress, then you were in the wrong place.
Or Svein had told Helfdan not to have one. That such a thing would make him a target.
I don't know but he was watching the other other men, frowning slightly. Then he turned and nodded at Svein.
“Come on then lads.” Svein called. “Honour and Glory are not won resting on our heels. We have Giants to see.”
From somewhere I found the strength to lift up a foot and place it in front of another. Then I could take another step and another and another until I was running behind the Shield Wall.
Perrin and Kar had gone running ahead to scout while the rest of us had taken a break. I had not truly appreciated how fast those two men could move until I noticed them running back to us. They moved as a pair, same as how I had once seen Sir Rickard's bastards move. The one checking while the other moved. But this seemed more instinctual and less trained into them.
Perrin would shoot a Harpy out of the sky and Kar would run over and drive one of his short swords into the body of the thing. It astonished me that they did not get attacked more often but they made use of the cover, darting from pile of Harpy corpses to pile of corpses.
I saw Perrin crouch next to a corpse and shoot a Diving Harpy before putting his boot on the corpse next to him, pulling an arrow free and then shooting that at a Harpy that was diving towards Kar's exposed back.
The shield wall opened to allow the two men in. I felt a little better at the state of Kar who was obviously struggling with the exertion.
“I'm getting too old for this,” the pale, thin man complained.
“You're younger than me,” Svein pointed out as he came over, Kerrass and Ciri with him.
“We found the cave.” Perrin wasn't out of breath and he spoke with a thick accent that I had to work to understand. He was counting his arrows as he spoke. “Group of trolls milling about in the entranceway. Covered in ice they were.”
Ciri winced.
“Small things with them, would have taken them for dogs except these things are all icy as well.” Having counted his arrows, Perrin's hands automatically found his pouch and jammed some tobacco into his mouth before he started chewing.
“Any sign of the giants?” Helfdan wanted to know.
Kar shook his head. “No. We couldn't get close enough to see.” He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. “The rocks form a gully which we're going to have to go into the entranceway.”
“Any way we could go over the side of the gully?” Svein wanted to know.
“Not unless you're a better climber than me.” Kar told him. “You can feel it getting colder the closer you get to the cave.” He shuddered, “The rocks are slick with ice.”
“And those hounds are easily able to climb over them.” Kerrass told us. He and Ciri had begun conferring when Perrin started talking about the ice trolls.
“What are they?” Helfdan wanted to know.
“Hounds of the hunt.” Ciri told him.
Helfdan flinched as she spoke. It would seem that he still wasn't entirely over whatever problem he had with her, despite the sailing lesson.
“Remember when the Wraiths of Morhogg attacked Skellige?”
“How could we forget?” Svein answered with a touch of asperity. “Nilfgaard was about to invade and then suddenly we were joining forces.”
“Well...”
“Cut it short Swallow.” Kerrass was holding onto his medallion. “We are not going to be free from attack for long.”
“Conjunction of spheres,” Ciri rattled off quickly. “Opened portals, Realm of Frost nearby, monsters affiliated with cold came through.”
“Which monsters?”
“Lots of monsters.”
“Well...” Helfdan frowned in confusion. “We still hit them as hard as we can right?”
“Pretty much.” Ciri smiled at him.
“Then I don't understand the problem.” Helfdan visibly tossed the problem aside.
“HOUNDS.” Someone yelled.
“Brace the wall.” Svein pushed his way back towards the front of his men. “Spears.”
“Come on Freddie,” Kerrass tugged me by the shoulder. “That means you.”
Once again I found myself pushing my spear through a gap in the shields. A lower one this time, more aimed at the smaller hounds that we were expecting. I had time for a small glimpse through one of the gaps higher up to see what we were facing.
I thought that calling them Hounds was a bit ambitious. They were lumbering.... things. Yes they had four legs and ran across the ground in the same way that dogs, wolves or whatever do. But that was where the similarity stopped for me. They looked as though they were scaled at this distance with large spikes all over them where I couldn't tell if they were spines or thick hair or if they really were just spikes, standing out from the body. I could see that waves of cold vapour billowed out from their mouths and rolled off their flanks and their shoulders.
But truth be told, I was more interested in the trolls that followed them.
They looked like trolls, they moved like trolls but instead of having rocky protrusions sticking out of their backs and faces. These things had lumps, spikes really, of ice. They had the same thing going on, of their breath seeming like ice crystals forming in the air and although I knew it was my imagination. I could feel myself getting colder just looking at them. Their clubs were nothing more than large icicles that looked as though they had been pulled from the lips of a cliff. Huge, white things. How could they possibly survive the first impact?
I looked back. Finnvald and his men were still shooting at the swarming Harpys and were getting increasingly tied up by them. I wanted the safety in numbers and I found the sudden and utterly foolish urge to run across the open ground littered with the corpses of the Harpies that had been killed as well as one or two bodies of men who had been lifted into the air and torn apart by the flying monstrocities. There was no chance at all that I would make it. But on the other hand, I wanted the protection of those extra bodies so badly that I could almost taste it.
I took a deep breath and braced my spear.
“All right, here they come.” Svein called.
“The hounds are here to break our line.” Kerrass told us all, carefully and clearly, making sure that we heard every word. “They will try and force their way through and force gaps in our line so that we will turn and face them. Make no mistake. This is a ruse designed to scatter us ready for the trolls to hit us. The giants will come after that.”
“I thought we were supposed to be talking to the giants.” Someone joked to a bit of laughter. It was probably Kar.”
“Then they saw your face Kar.” Haakon joked. The tall man had a wicked sense of humour when he decided to employ it. “They saw your face and decided that that alone was worth an attack.”
“That'll do now lads.” Svein was leaning against the backs of some shields and had his eye to the gap. “BRACE.”
This was a different noise to when the Harpy's attacked. It was heavier and wetter in some way than before. Certainly there was a deeper weight behind it. One man tumbled backwards. I have no idea why he was sent flying and no-one else was although I suppose he might not have braced his shield properly. A Hound came through the hole after him before Ciri appeared between the hound and it's target, fairly decapitating the thing. The man climbed to his feet and limped back into line.
I thrust forward with my spear using the short powerful thrusts that I had learnt all that time ago. Sometimes it seemed to bite deep and other times it didn't.
“And STEP.” Svein ordered
It seemed impossible to me that the shield wall was expected to move forward into the mass of freezing monsters. But the men of the Wave-serpent, and not for the first time, did the impossible, pushing forward.
More than one Hound was pushed backwards, some still screaming and trying to lash out at the men climbing over them. I saw a warrior lean down and lean on a sword to a spray of white blood.
“And STEP.” Then we did it again. I realised that I was falling behind, so aghast at what was happening that I had frozen in place. A harpy dived at me and I dove out of the way. As I came to my feet, Ciri was there, already pulling her sword from the body of the creature that had come close enough to me that I could smell it's putrid breath.
“Keep up.” She called before running off. She and Kerrass were keeping up a running Skirmish behind and to the sides of the moving shield-wall. Any creature that managed to leap over the shields, or loop around the sides were quickly met with the flashing sword of a Witcher and an Empress. Kerrass was grim as he worked. His face an emotionless mask while Ciri wore a strange, hungry expression, half grin and half snarl. I shuddered and ran to join them.
I was feeling more than a little overwhelmed and outclassed. It was all getting a bit too much. I reached for some kind of anger. A rage that would help focus me and keep me going. But I couldn't find it. I was just terrified, stamping forward whenever Svein called and lunging with my spear when there was a space.
But the trolls were coming.
I could feel the ground shaking as they came, rumbling footsteps and the air whistling as they waved their impossible, icy clubs above their heads.
“Let them through,” Svein called and our line parted before the first troll that came into our line. The swinging club meeting nothing but air as it missed Ivar's head by a matter if inches.
I sometimes think as though it would be an interesting study to study the mind. To study the way that the brain works. Specifically my brain. A good man, a friend of mine had nearly had his skull caved in. I had ducked myself despite the fact that I had been well out of reach of any kind of danger. People were shouting and screaming, one of whom might even have been me, there was the sound of metal on stone, metal on flesh and even metal on metal although I suspect that that was just metal on ice.
I had run forward after the troll that had passed us with it's makeshift club whistling overhead, my plan was to get a nice firm lunge into the back of the knee, a move that I had used before when fighting rabid trolls with Kerrass in Southern Kaedwen. I would barely hurt it but bipedal things with knees and elbows all work the same. If you put something sharp, with enough force in the part of the joint that bends, then the entire section will collapse in protest. That way, those men who had the power and the skill (ie Kerrass) would be able to step in and to the proper amount of damage to the creature.
And that's precisely my point.
All the way through the entire thing. My brain was watching what was happening and offering a strange kind of commentary on what was happening and that is just one example. As the troll passed me I remembered those early lessons from Kerrass and strode forward to do my own bit to try and help. I remember that detached part of my brain commenting on the body mechanics of the way bipedal creatures work.
Occasionally, I still get notes from the university which try and tell me that I have strayed too far from the academic purpose of these essays so here is a point on that regard.
Indeed, I have recently sent off a paper to the university press on this very subject if you are that interested in it.
For all that the creatures of the continent have many differences, and they do, there are some things that are always the same. One of those things is the presence of Elbows, Shoulders and knees. If you can see a creature with these things then you can expect them to move in certain ways.
That's not to say that you can be complacent. Strength, agility and intelligence are all varying factors but there are some things that always remain the same. For example, legs have to bend before a jump. An elbow cannot go too far in the opposite direction, the body simply won't allow it. The same with knees. Which means that the proper application of pressure to these joints and limbs will cause even the strongest creature to fall to their knees.
This can be useful in combat in many different ways. One of those ways is that it doesn't matter how big or how heavily armoured you are. If someone takes a fucking great warhammer and smashes it into the side of your knee then your knee will shatter. Even if you survive the fight, then you are never walking again.
Barring magical intervention of course.
The same goes for a blow to the back of the knee. If you force an impact into a joint, forcing it in the direction that it is supposed to bend. Then the chances are good that it will bend against the will of the owner of the joint.
Which was what I was trying to do here.
But that wasn't the entire thing that my brain was noticing.
I finally learned the difference between a battle and a fight.
Some time ago I had commented, both by myself and in conversation with Sam, that there can be joy in a fight. When the cause is just. When you have been all pent up for so long with fear or anticipation. When you know that your cause is just or at least, that you utterly agree with the cause, then that explosion of fear and anticipation into the sudden physical exertion as well as the ability to finally pour all of that pent up feeling onto the people that are trying to kill you.
As well as that feeling that you get when you are close to death, where life seems so much sweeter. There is joy in that.
Sam told me, when I talked to him about it sometime later, that he agreed. But that such a feeling did not exist in a battle and in that moment I understood why.
There is no time for joy.
On a surface level this is because battles last far longer than a fight. The longest fight that I have ever been involved in was the running fight with Jack around Toussaint. But try as I might, I can't call that a battle. After that, I suppose that we would have to call the running series of fights against the Cult of the First-Born. But those were definitely fights. We were fighting for our survival and the sweetness of life in those moments was almost unbearable. You could even call it a struggle rather than a fight. A struggle where I was constantly astonished to find that I was still alive and ended with us winning, but not beating the enemy.
I remembered weeping like a baby after surviving that. I still do sometimes when I wake up having had a nightmare about the mist coming down off the mountains.
I think that there are two differences between a fight and a battle. The first is the level of organisation that goes into a battle. Fights are over in seconds, at most minutes. The thing with Jack was an outlier. The fight in Angraal against the forces of Fuck-face was over in a minute. Whereas we had already been fighting for a couple of hours. We had had time to stop, have a rest, something to eat and drink for crying out loud. It is impossible to maintain that combat feeling in those kinds of situations. In a fight, it's an all or nothing scramble for survival. But in a battle, you are aware that your strength and energy are finite resources that need to be conserved and properly directed into the correct channels.
The other thing that makes difference between a battle and a fight is the level of organised chaos that goes into a battle. Constantly worrying about where the enemy is. Where are we standing. What are we standing on. Who we are fighting. What do we know. What can we see.
The thing about a fight is that I knew who my enemy was. Where they were and what I wanted to do about it. In a battle, you have to be constantly looking around yourself in an effort to try and preserve yourself. Where is the enemy. What are they doing? That crowd of creatures that was running away, was it pretending and is now on it's way back. Has it changed it's mind and is now returning after gathering up it's courage. That hill over there, are there a group of archers behind it? A group of cavalry? In this case, is that where the giants are hiding, ready to rain down rocks, trees and bits of ice on top of us.
That's what the difference in is a battle. It's almost as though a battle is actually a series of fights against a series of individual opponents. But you have to treat it as one big fight against all of the different things. Just thinking about it now was exhausting.
I came to this realisation the hard way. As I ran in to plant the blade of my spear into the back of a troll's knee I was abruptly tugged from my feet and thrown to the ground, the impact driving the air from my lungs. A fraction of a heartbeat later, as I lay on my back desperately trying to recover my breath as well as looking around for a threat...
Write this down. In a fight, the floor is never ever your friend.
But as I was doing all of these things, I literally felt the cold from the passage of the Troll's club over the space where I would have been standing. I turned, to see the warrior who had knocked me from my feet yelling at me through a mask of snow, sand and blood. I had no idea what he was screaming. Probably something to do with “Watch your back you stupid fucker.” But I didn't take it in. Because I saw the Hound running towards the man's back.
Long lessons with Kerrass had taught me that I never ever let go of my spear. Even now, even if I'm as safe as I can possibly be and I know that if something is there to attack me then we have bigger problems to worry about, if someone drops something or there's a sudden noise or when people clap me on the shoulder when I'm not expecting them. Whenever this happens, I have an involuntary spasm where my hands tighten as if to desperately keep my grip on my weapons.
This is sometimes entertaining to Kerrass whenever I happen to be holding onto a food item. A chicken leg for instance.
So I rolled, scrambled to get my feet under me, bent before using what little strength I could summon so that I could leap forward, burying my spear into the flanks of the hound. The teeth and the jaws of the beast missed my saviour by the width of a finger. He realised what was happening and pulled a short axe from his belt and buried the head of his axe into the beast.
I got my feet back unto me and used the spear as a lever to almost lift it onto it's side. The warrior pulled his axe free and struck again. And again.
And again.
Pretty sure the beast was already dead by the time of the last strike but hey, if it made him feel better. I placed my boot on the side and tugged my spear free with a tug. The warrior clapped me on the shoulder with what I thought was a grin and gestured towards one of the nearby trolls with a head movement that was a universal gesture of “Shall we?”
I nodded a response which I hoped stood for “why not?”
We ran, him leading with his axe held high.
Right into the swinging club of that same troll. He screamed as he flew through the air although with the impact of that club, the sheer force of that alone must have killed him.
It was only by a miracle that that same swing missed me, a miracle or a lack of physical conditioning on my part as if I had been running any faster then I would have been much closer to the warrior in question and much more likely to be struck. As it was, I was now inside the things reach and thrust my spear up and into it's softer gut. I was not alone either, I saw two of Perrin's arrows already sunk into the things softer belly and as I thrust, another bounced off the things chest. Another man was with me with his own spear, aiming further up for a throat. Another man got even closer and plunged his dagger into the things belly before ripping it along in an effort to disembowel the beast.
If this had been a fight, it would have been over then with the thing beginning it's painful and slow process of changing from being a living and breathing thing, into being a dead thing.
But it was not a fight. It was a battle and I had already learned the lesson that it was impossible to remain safe and to stand still at the same time.
So I used the first movement that Kerrass ever taught me with the spear. I twisted and pulled the spear out and I was already running. Looking for Kerrass, Helfdan or Svein, anyone really. I knew where Ciri was, you could tell by the occasional green flashes as she teleported around the battlefield.
From somewhere, possibly having finally drawn blood, I found a second wind and ran at the back of a troll that was swinging his club at the two or three men in front of him that were trying to get at his soft underbelly. Another man was trying to bash away at the things hardened, craggy back with his axe. Again, I have no idea who it was but he just had time to realise the futility of his actions when I got there.
I ducked under and thrust my dagger into the things groin, aiming for where the femoral artery would be in a human.
I was successful although not in the way I wanted. The thing bellowed in agony as I hit something that would make any man wince in pain and bent down to look and see what had caused the pain. As he couldn't see me, he spun, still bending down which meant that the axeman had a clear swing at the things face.
Which is just as well as the next thing that would have happened would have been that the troll stood on me.
Then I felt the ground begin to shake.
I mean really shake. Not just with the coming of the Ice trolls, but to really fucking shake.
Shaking enough that I could barely keep my feet.
My memory of the next few moments is a little hazy. I saw two things, one after the other. But which one came first? I have no idea. So what I'm going to do is to just tell you what the two things were.
For the first time, I saw an Ice Giant. Some people call them Frost Giants but I always think that that makes them seem a little lighter and more cuddly than they actually are. I can tell you that they are certainly not made of ice. Nor is their blood made from ice water. It is light in colour and I suspect that it is this that, at least partially gives them their skin tone of light, very pale blue.
Like all other anthropoids of their type, they have two arms, two legs, hair on their head and face which is black and although they are extremely gangly, as though their arms and legs are too long for their bodies, they are also grotesquely muscled. Their bodies are a solid mass of muscle.
By “grotesquely muscled” I mean that these things had muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles that seemed as though they were out of balance. As though the wrong groups of muscles had been enlarged during some form of training.
Kerrass has a lot to say on the matter of training. He would argue that all things need to be exercised, or trained, in balance. This means that no one one set of muscles out grows another set of muscles and it has to be said, other people who know about this kind of thing have agreed with him. Sometimes there are factors that mean that some folk are more muscled than others. You see knights that are built like triangles. Huge shoulder, chest and arm muscles before they taper down to a relatively slim waist and lean legs. This is because they carry the wait of a lot of that armour on their shoulders and upper bodies, while still being required to swing heavy weapons about. Whereas their legs only need to be strong enough to get the knight into the saddle and to survive the same knight's dismount.
And many knights use cranes or mounting blocks to do that same thing. Or travel with a large number of squires in order to lift them into the saddle.
So when I saw an Ice giant, I thought of a body builder. One of the circus or festival strongmen that lift heavy barrels above their heads and wrestle in over the top bouts of athleticism for the entertainment of children and those adults who want to remember what it was like to believe in heroes and villains.
But then if you can imagine those people, then imagine them if they have certain muscles that have been amplified much more than they should have been. A thin shoulder followed by a massive, corded set of forearm muscles. On a body where the head seems too small to support such massive limbs.
Ooooh, I know. Imagine a man who has one side of his chest fully developed, but where the other side of the chest is underdeveloped. And the same person has one half of his abs but not the other. All the while, massive veins stick out of the flesh everywhere.
I remember having just a moment of disappointment when I saw the giants. I don't know what I had pictured when I had first heard the terms “Frost Giants” and “Ice Giants”. But I do know that that part of my imagination that was still twelve years old was bitterly disappointed by what turned up to attack us that day.
I was disappointed with how small they were. I wanted them to be huge creatures. Twenty, thirty feet tall. Comparable with mountains in size, towering above treetops as they came.
They weren't that tall. Part of the fact was that they seemed to shamble along in a kind of stoop which made them seem that much shorter.
The rational part of my brain would like to say that they were still massively tall and easily towered over us. Well over twelve to Eighteen foot tall they moved with a strange lolloping shamble. Again, I have to suppose that this is a side effect of the lack of balance in their musculature and the slightly malformed nature of their skeletons.
So that was one of the two things that I saw. Three giants, charging across the sand towards us. Their extremities protected with bits of driftwood tied together. They looked primitive but I supposed that they would be more than effective when it came to actually defending themselves. So I firmly reminded myself of Kerrass' old mantra. That just because something looks stupid, or sounds stupid, then that doesn't mean that it actually is stupid. It's true for the opposite too. Some of the most educated people that I know are dumber than pig dribble.
If this entire battle was actually done with the thought and will of the Ice Giants behind it, then that would certainly prove the point.
The other thing that I saw, oddly, was the thing that really sent ice down my veins. Finnvald and his men were retreating.
No, that's the wrong word. “Retreating” suggests some kind of flight. Of running away. Of fleeing before an overwhelming enemy. Someone who is retreating might be doing so in good order, facing the enemy so as not to be overwhelmed. It might be something tactical....
This was almost certainly something tactical, just not about this particular battlefield.
… Or it might be something uncontrolled. With men throwing down their weapons, casting aside shields and bits of armour in order that their limbs might be able to move that little bit faster.
These men seemed a little calm for all of that.
Also, I could see more than a few of them trying to push the Wave-Serpent out to sea while the rest of their fellows were climbing aboard their own vessels. It would seem that Ciri and Helfdan had driven the Wave-Serpent too far onto the beach for this to work though as the ship wasn't moving. Instead, the half a dozen warriors that were trying this, took axes to the hull while one of them lit a few torches that were thrown into the deck.
Regardless of any of these things. Finnvald's men were no longer covering us with arrow fire. Instead, the only arrows that were being fired were used to keep the harpies and the rest off their own selves. Those creatures that were attacking them rather than us.
It is a strange moment when you realise that “We” has turned into “Them” and “Us.” It is not a pleasant sensation.
I ran. Frantically looking for someone, anyone that might be able to change what was happening. I felt the noose tightening around our necks. I felt sure that this was it. That we would be losing, that we were about to be stomped flat by giants, squished by the clubs of trolls and carried off to be food for the harpies in their nests. And that wasn't including what was going on with the hounds. My fear was palpable and clawing at my throat.
I ran. It's a miracle that I survived the entire process if we're being honest with each other. A miracle. As it was, I batted away a Harpy attack with the business end of a spear, I have no idea how much damage I did. I ducked under the swing of an Ice troll, the swing quickly followed up by a pair of Warriors. I finally saw Helfdan. He was levering his shorter, hatchet sized axe from the fallen body of a troll.
He looked up as I approached.
The bastard wasn't even breathing hard.
“Finnvald and his men are leaving.” I told him between heaving breaths.
“Oh?” He turned and looked. “So they are.”
I stared at him as he watched Finnvald's people climb aboard their ships and push off. He seemed to take a long time over it. “Ah well.” He turned back to the fighting, took a deep breath and bellowed in a shout that sent my ears ringing. In that moment, it seemed impossible that so much noise could come from the throat of a human being.
“SVEIN.”
I shouldn't have been surprised. In the same way that Svein's voice is raspy and harsh due to him needing to be heard over the clamour and noise of a battlefield. Helfdan's voice needed to be heard over the crash of a storm.
So summoned, Svein was coming out of the melee. Kerrass was with him, Svein had taken a gash across his arm from something and had a cloth pressed up against it.
Helfdan frowned when he saw it.
“You alright?” He asked Svein.
“Just about. Bastard swooped down at me. Only just caught the evil flappy bastard on my shield didn't I.”
“Getting careless.” Helfdan chided gently.
“Too old for it. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You could do with letting me train a replacement.”
“You just want a season off so that you can try and get Yngvild pregnant again.”
“Not an unfair criticism.” Svein admitted.
I was staring at them openmouthed. As they joked, our so called allies were taking to ship and fleeing. Leaving our own ship damaged and all the time, our enemies were getting stronger and closer.
Kerrass clapped me on the shoulder. “Still alive Freddie.”
“More by luck than design. What the fuck is...” But Kerrass waved me to silence.
“The giants are coming.” Helfdan told Svein.
“I knew that, hard to miss the fuckers...”
“But did you know that Finnvald is leaving?” Helfdan smiled as he said that. As though a great joke was being played.
“Is he?” Svein looked. “So he is, the slimy little fucker.”
I felt my mouth fall open. “Is this the time for...” I wanted to ask them why they were making jokes but Kerrass stopped me.
“Disappointing.” Helfdan mused. “But not entirely unexpected.”
“Wait,” I wanted to know. “You expected that?”
“Of course.”
“Gentlemen.... Might I remind you.... Giants.” Kerrass smiled faintly.
Svein and Helfdan looked at each other. “Man has a point.” Svein said.
Kerrass spun and shot a Harpy out of the sky. I hadn't noticed it.
“So what do you reckon?” Svein asked Helfdan, I thought I saw what was happening then. I thought I could see just a glimpse of what was going on beneath the mask of the two men. Both of them knew the answer. I was reminded, not for the first time during my association with the men of the Wave-Serpent, of Sir Rickard and the Bastards. In the same way that Rickard presented a face towards his men, these men were doing the same. Our allies were retreating, leaving us to die. They had either betrayed us, which the attack on the Wave-Serpent suggested. Or they had just given up.
That retreat meant that the Harpies, which were currently wheeling and milling around, would soon be free to attack us again. The hounds and the Trolls were still in amongst the remainder of the Wave-Serpent's crew and the Giants were just about to smash into the same melee.
This was it. This was the moment where the tide turned and our run of good luck deserted us. We would have to retreat back to the Wave-Serpent. Hope it was still sea worthy before finding another solution or, which was more likely, heading for port to weather out the passage of the Spectral ship and then moving on. Trying to bring political pressure to bear in order to get the information that we needed.
That I wanted.
For a moment there, part of me admitted that this was the easier path. That this was what we should be doing. It would be easier.
But another part of me rebelled. That was a defeat. The part of me that was a warrior, despite my own best efforts, rebelled at the idea.
But there was no way I could ask these men to risk their lives to get me the information that I wanted. It was so desperate and there was no way that we could win. This was it. It was all over.
“I dunno.” Helfdan admitted before shrugging and grinning in a way that I had never seen on him before. It was a hungry smile. As though something had been unleashed. “I suppose that we charge.”
“What?” I asked stupidly before my mouth hung open.
“Now we're fucking talking.” Svein grinned savagely.