Free A Templar's Apprentice by Kat Black

I could not see her but felt thepresence of the cat moments before a tiny tongue scratchily lapped my fingers. She leapt to my chest, and I curled my fingers in the soft fur of her neck. Sleep came a short while later.

    I marked the wall next to my hammock with a scraper Seamus gave me to clear the cracks in the decking. Fifteen days at sea. It seemed longer.
    There was a strange sameness to life on the ship. We rose early and did our assigned duties; we prayed constantly and trained nonstop. I received lessons in reading, writing, and astronomy, and I learned to focus, ground, and shield.
    Odd. I had thought that getting away would mean that I’d never have to do things that people demanded of me again. I was wrong.
    If it was not the Templar, which I didn’t mind at all, it was Seamus, heaping every horrible task aboard on my back. I looked at my hands. They were callused and cracked, and my legs were killing me.
    Still worse, I was having trouble sleeping. My duties on watch tonight meant I had to rest during the daylight. I’d not gotten used to it.
    â€œTormod, I told ye to help even out the ballast before ye bedded down. O’ course ye didn’t.” Seamus’s voice cutacross the dim quiet of the hold. “Get to it. Ye’ve duties to attend.”
    I gritted my teeth and swung my feet to the deck. Seamus was an unending source of misery. No matter what I did, it was not good enough. No matter how I tried, it was not what he would have. He harassed me nonstop.
    â€œMove it, Tormod.”
    I wanted to beat the man bloody. I swear it. Every day during my prayers I asked God to strike him repeatedly with all of the plagues. But to no avail. I was not going to get the sleep I needed. Grumbling, I heaved to my feet.
    From the stairs I heard coughing. One burst followed by another, and then a hacking wad of spittle was heaved somewhere off to my left. Seamus cleared his throat and sent one last parting jab. “Ye’ll have to take the wheel this afternoon. I’ll take the night.”
    I crossed the dark hold, pleased. Perhaps God had heard me after all. Seamus was ill. I hoped that he was miserable.
    As I came up from below, I saw one of the deckhands, Horace, at work. The sweat gleamed on his dark-skinned back, and his arms, the size of great tree trunks, flexed beneath their burden.
    It was Horace’s job to shift the enormous rocks weused as ballast to keep the ship evenly weighted. The constant crash of the waves undid his work nearly as fast as he’d accomplished it.
    The duty was, to my mind, terrible. The stuff had a stink about it that was most unnatural. He said the rocks had been dredged from the harbor where the privy pits emptied. Still, even with that, he was of a good temperament. When I’d asked how he could be content doing what he did, Horace had told me that it took him up from the depths of the dark hold and into the light of day.
    I understood not wanting to be in the dark, but not how he could find peace and contentment redoing the same job day in and day out. He actually sang as he worked, songs I’d never heard the like of before.
    â€œGreetings, Horace,” I called as I approached. It was good to give warning, else the strong man might heft a rock in your direction. He looked up and smiled, his teeth bright in the dark of his face. The smile was always a surprise to me. He was quite fearsome without it.
    â€œA beautiful day, is it not, Tormod?”
    I looked up to the cold, chill sky. “If ye say ’tis, Horace. I’ve come to help.”
    â€œI’m near on done,” he said. “Don’t trouble yerself.”
    Geordie, another of the deckhands, called out, “I could use ye here, Tormod, if ye’re free. This damn mistis making the tar unpredictable. ’Tis thickening before I can apply it.”
    I hurried to his side and took the tar bucket and began to stir the mixture. Geordie was a small, wiry man