Vishay Town appeared soon after. A somewhat eccentric small port built almost entirely out of wood, at first it seemed to be not much more of a shanty town, built right on the beach. Its outskirts consisted of not much more than a sweep of wooden boxes haphazardly nailed together to provide some defence against the elements. Grubby children wearing barely enough to keep off the cold scampered in between the shanties and laughed as they threw bits of twig or shells at the party, then ran off. Weathered-looking locals scowled at them as they pulled hand-carts of fruit, or vegetables, or fabrics, off down the south-west road that Olivia had kept so carefully away from.

‘Vishay is a trading outpost,’ Egea explained as they walked. ‘I’ve not been this far north before, but its name is known on the circuit. There ain’t much else up here in Farda, so it’s not very densely populated, but Vishay serves as a good halfway point on the route back and forth between Whiteland and the Last Isle, so merchant ships use it as a rest-stop, and it gets some good trade.’

Eventually the shanty ended and they came to some larger wooden buildings that stood right on the seafront, forming a promenade. The smell of brine filled their nostrils, and gulls flapped and squawked in the air. A few locals were mad enough to be swimming in what must be the freezing cold water.

A couple of ships were visible on the water, but they were each moving away from the port, east and west respectively, and already both quite far away.

Sticking out into the water from the sand in front of the buildings at intervals were a series of four wooden jetties.

In the event, there was, in fact, only a single ship moored at one of the jetties today. It looked just like the sailing ships in the picture books that Horatio had had read to him as a child, a [sleek schooner] with a large mainsail and a smaller second-sail each with their own mast, though these were currently both furled, a raised forecastle on the back with a wheel to steer, and a pointed prow on the front with a green-tailed mermaid figurehead hanging from it, complete with clams to preserve her dignity. On the side of the ship next to this figurehead were painted the words “THE WANDERING HEART”.

‘I suppose,’ said Wyvera, ‘that this is the ship that we will be getting on board to cross to the Frozen Wastes.’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Olivia in her way.

‘I’ll go and make enquiries,’ said Horatio, with a quick sidelong glance at Ceres, feeling the sense that he should take charge. That is what a hero would do.

He walked down the jetty towards the ship, passing an old man who was pulling a cart loaded with sacks from the ship up to the beach. Primus and Olivia came with him while the others waited in front of the buildings.

At the end of the jetty, standing at the edge of the deck of the ship next to the rail, was a man wearing what was quite clearly a captain’s hat, looking over a ledger and crossing lines off in it with a quill. He was foreign, with dark, earth-coloured skin, and clean-shaven, not matching Horatio’s stereotype of sailors. He wore a magnificent long red coat adorned with golden buttons. His boots were big and black. And the hat really was quite impressive. Longer than it was wide, it had golden piping and a single large monster’s feather sticking out of it, possibly taken from an eagle.

The man glanced up from his ledger as Horatio approached.

‘Hello?’ he said in a foreign-accented voice that came from the back of his throat. ‘What do you want?’

‘Er, hello. My companions and I were looking to charter a ship.’

The man smiled knowingly. ‘Sure, I can transport you.’ His gaze ranged behind Horatio to the rest of the party, and his smile became a frown. ‘For a price. Where are you headed, so many of you? Whiteland? The Last Isle? Somewhere else?’

‘Er,’ said Horatio, ‘we’re actually looking to sail to the Frozen Wastes.’

The man’s head rocked back. ‘The Frozen Wastes?! Why in the hells would you want to go there?’

‘That is our business,’ said Olivia from alongside Horatio.

‘Well, nothing doing,’ said the ship’s captain. ‘I’m a merchant, not a ferryman. Whiteland, or the Last Isle, those are your options. That’s where the trade is, so that’s where I go.’

‘We can make it worth your while,’ said Primus. ‘I mean, especially worth your while.’

It really was quite useful having a retired scholar who was considerably wealthy in the party, Horatio reflected.

The captain rested his quill on the page of his ledger and rubbed his smooth chin. ‘Hmmm,’ he intoned. ‘How “especially” are we talking?’

‘One hundred gold pieces,’ said Primus.

However experienced and cunning a merchant this man was, he could not help one dark eyebrow from quirking up slightly, Horatio spotted.

But then it came down again and the captain shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Even for that much money. It’s too dangerous. The seas near the Frozen Wastes are treacherous, full of ice, and rife with monsters. They skirt around on the ice, and even come up directly from the sea. Even if I was crazy enough to agree to take you there, I doubt we would be able to survive for very long. The monsters would overrun us before we got anywhere close to landing on the Wastes. That’s why I prefer to stick to safer seas, and the established trade routes, which are safer.’

‘Don’t worry about the monsters,’ said Primus. ‘We can handle them.’

The captain narrowed his eyes.

‘Who are you anyway?’ he said. ‘I’ve seen the rest of your group standing over there. A rich old man, a merc, a wolf clanner, and six young women? Are you a family? Some sort of a travelling circus? A millionaire travelling with his bodyguards and his harem? And what are you wanting to do in the Frozen Wastes anyway? Are you on some sort of exploring expedition?’

‘As the young lady said, that is our business,’ said Primus. ‘But yes, you can think of us as on an expedition, if that helps you. I am a scholar of magic from Fyorda, and there are phenomena in the Frozen Wastes that I want to study. I have hired these companions during the course of my journey to protect me from monster attacks along the way. They are all skilled in magic and the fighting arts, in their various different ways. They will be able to fight off any monsters we encounter easily.’

‘Hm,’ said the captain, tapping his lips with the feather of his quill. ‘Well you would have thought that you would have made more careful arrangements than just turning up in Vishay and hoping to find someone who would take you to the Frozen Wastes. You were lucky that I had just landed here. Although I suppose your gold is very persuasive… Alright. Here’s the deal. If you make it three hundred gold pieces, and show me these “fighting arts” you boast of by defeating some of the monsters here on the coastline in front of me, to convince me you really can protect my ship, then I’ll take you to the Frozen Waste.’

‘We’re happy to showcase our fighting abilities to you,’ said Primus. ‘But I’ll only go as high as one hundred and fifty coins.’

‘Two hundred.’

‘Done.’

They shook on it, and Primus gave the captain the first fifty gold pieces as a deposit.

‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ said the captain when he had counted the coins again to double check Primus had given him the correct amount. ‘My name is Antonio. I have been sailing these trade routes for many years, though I have never met someone stupid or rich enough to convince me to sail to the Frozen Waste. Now come, let us go and find some monsters along the shore, and you can show me that you really are capable of protecting my ship.’

Antonio went and gave his first mate and small crew orders to look after the Wandering Heart while he would be gone for a little while, and then they went with him and told the rest of the party what they were doing, then set off down the beach to look for some monsters.

‘Grandfather,’ Olivia said in a hushed voice as they walked, out of the hearing of Antonio who walked up ahead, trying to ingratiate himself with Wyvera, Egea and Ceres, ‘this is a poor use of time. We need to get to the Frozen Waste to find the sword as soon as possible. Every moment we spend showing off our fighting skills to this sceptical captain is a moment that the Braxians could be getting nearer to us, or to discovering the location of the Sword themselves, or even to finding it.’

‘I know,’ said Primus, ‘I know, child. However, we are at this man’s mercy. Do you know how to sail a ship? I don’t. None of us do. Unfortunately, it seems we need to allay his concerns in order for him to grant us passage. We don’t have any other choice Let’s just get it over with as quickly as we can. You and Helen should be able to lead us to the nearest monsters.’

Unfortunately, it took them quite a long time to find the nearest monster group, even with Olivia’s augury and Helen’s hunting skills. They plodded along the shore, the soft sand squelching under their feet, for a good few hours before Helen finally locked onto some, slightly further inland, and they made a beeline for them. It made an unusual change to be attacking a group of monsters for once, rather than being attacked, but when the beasts sighted them they were only too keen to provide a fight in which the party could show off their battle skills to Antonio.

Battle 2