Zartan found his fellow seamates on this voyage to be as motley a crew as he'd ever seen, with such a rogues gallery of cuthroats and lunatics as currently plagued all seven seas. They came from every continent, and spoke many a strange tongue, but there was little fighting among them even given their collective bad temper and mistrust, for they were captained not by Bo (to Zartan's surprise) but by such an ill-tempered giant that even a ship of pirates were as well behaved as children at a church picnic. This giant was merely called Cee, which Zartan supposed was short for Captain. He was swarthy and tattooed with such intricacy Zartan could scarcely make out what was inked on the man's skin, though he sometimes had an impression of churning seas and mighty living jungles.
Cee led but one ship among several, which Zartan supposed were captained by similiar fierce giants, which he was assured by Bo were but typical representatives of the Kosar stock, and manned by as ugly and awful crews as his own. Their ship headed north, beyond even the northmost islands towards polar waters that were as much ice as sea. Their progress slowed, but the able captain found fjords and byways through bergs and glaciers, sometimes bearing so close to them that Zartan could reach out either port or starboard and break a crystalline stalactite off of the mass of ice on either side. And yet the captain bore on, into such frigid cold and such lifeless frozen landscape that most of the men huddled for warmth on the lower decks. Zartan himself had to keep Bob, who hated the cold even more than he did, snuggled deep in his coats to keep the poor bird from freezing to death.
They at last reached a point when they could go no further, but here Zartan was shocked again, for they landed in a little village hewn into the ice -- homes and shops not made of bricks like igloos, but actually carved whole into the side of a giant glacier. These men wore furs so thick they looked like bears, and barely spoke as they led the crews of all three ships into the village.