The monsters defeated, the party pressed on.

The complaints and requests to stop ceased–at least nobody voiced them any more. They walked in the shadows of the Northernmost Mountains now, and the attack from that latest group of monsters appeared to have brought home the urgency of their quest once more.

When they reached the foot of the nearest mountain, instead of setting out to climb all the way up it and descend its other side, which would be pointless and waste precious energy and time, they began trekking across the lower slopes of the mountain, making to cross in between it and its neighbour, at the places where the mountains met.

All the while, they kept their gaze fixed as far as possible on the tallest mountain, a few rows back, when it wasn’t obscured by the nearer peaks, taking it as their compass-point.

In time, with much dogged determination, grim defiance of the cold, picking one another up when they fell and egging each other one with cries of encouragement to keep going, they reached the foot of the tallest mountain.

Now everyone did stop and stand still together, staring up at the mountain. Nobody needed to announce that it was time to stop–they all just did so intuitively, even Olivia and Primus. They were beginning to think and act with one mind and purpose, even in spite of their differences and squabbles, just as they did increasingly whenever they were forced to fight monsters.

The mountain loomed before them where they stood in a snow-covered slither of a valley between it and the neighbouring mountain they had just traversed, reaching up into clouds above, sheer and imposing, daring them to even consider scaling it.

‘So we have to climb that?’ said Silvia.

‘I told you,’ said Olivia, somewhat exasperatedly, taking a leaf from her Grandfather’s book for a moment with her admonitionary tone, ‘we don’t need to get all the way to the peak. All we need to do is get about halfway up–maybe not even that. We’re looking for a cave carved out of ice, the entrance to which is somewhere on the mountain-face. The Sword is hidden in there, planted in an icy pedestal from which it must be drawn.’

Just for a moment, Horatio doubted.

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‘You’re absolutely sure of this?’ he asked Olivia. He didn’t want to have crossed the better part of a continent and the North Sea, fought countless monsters, a renegade pimp, and half-a-dozen Braxian champions, half-frozen his gonads off crossing this Frozen Waste and (perhaps worst of all) had to sleep next to Ouzo’s snoring, all to come on a wild Slime chase for a magical sword that wasn’t even there.

The Seer turned her cold blue eyes on him. ‘I am sure of it, sellsword. The Braxians know my power–you should not question it–and that is why they have sent so many of their captains after me–and possibly because they know it is here too. Rossalento’s people discerned that the Sword was in the North as well. And I have seen this very mountain in a waking vision clear as the very day which illuminates it now. The Clarent Sword is near.’

Horatio kept his mouth shut. That was a good enough response for him, he supposed. And, he reminded himself, whether he turned out to be the hero destined to wield this legendary blade against the Demon King or not, he was still going to get paid at the end of this. If he survived, that was.

It seemed to be a good enough response for everyone else, too, because when Olivia turned from Horatio and put one foot in front of the other to begin the ascent up the mountain slope, they all followed.

Horatio followed too.

‘Why do you waver now?’ Horatio was surprised to find Ceres whispering to him as she walked alongside.

‘I’m not wavering,’ he whispered back. ‘I just…we’ve come a long way. I don’t want it to be for nothing. But I trust. I trust in the Quest.’

‘That’s good,’ Ceres said back. ‘We’re all here with you, Horatio. You’re not on your own.’

Qind, but isn’t she beautiful, he thought as he regarded her walking alongside him, pulling her [fur coat] close about herself, her forelocks of blue hair dancing around her face in the wind. Why couldn’t I find the courage to tell her my feelings the other night on watch?

He resolved there and then that if they did find the Clarent Sword and he became the one to draw and wield it, he would make known his feelings to Ceres soon after.

The climb up the mountain was long, and hard, and cold, and taxed their shins, their determination and their patience. They spent almost all of it looking about for anything that could be a cave-mouth, and kept thinking that they had spotted one, only to find that it was just a crevice where the face of the mountain bent inwards on itself for a time, without forming a significant cave, or that they had in fact found a cave–but not the one that Olivia wanted.

In Horatio’s heart he clung on to Olivia’s evidence that she knew where she was going, and to her repeated assurances that ‘We’re close. We’re nearly there. Just a bit further.’

When they did eventually find the mouth of the correct cave, it was perhaps unsurprising that there was a group of monsters waiting a little way outside of it, as if guarding its entrance.

Battle3