Free The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3) by Stephen Deas

lobsters on his back and on his legs, but he hobbled up the ladder to the deck as eager as could be to get away from the sweat-stink below. He took a deep breath of cold fresh air and welcomed the wind into his hair, the stinging rain on his face. The ship was close to land, ploughing steadily through the waves with a good breeze from the stern. He strained his eyes, trying to see whether he could recognise the shape of the coastline. The misty rain blurred cliffs into grey shapes, while great fingers of dark rock pushed out into the sea, their sides sheer and marked only by the nests of birds and the occasional tuft of grass, their tops crowned with a scattering of windswept trees. Elsewhere, channels of water split the cliffs apart and wound away into the land.
    ‘They run for miles,’ Tarn told him when he pointed.
    As the day went on he began to see that where each channel reached the sea, the water was dotted with tiny islands, little more than heaps of boulders. Strange animals sat on them – seals, Tarn called them. Berren watched it all roll past, savouring the feel of the wind and the taste of the salt spray on his tongue. He was on a ship. He wasn’t a skag. He was on a ship and he was happy. He’d thought he’d never feel that again.
    They followed the coast for two more days then slowed and turned, edging their way into one of the channels. With its boats launched to guide it, the ship crept between two vertical walls of rock that were twice as high as the tallest mast. Near the entrance to the inlet Berren watched fish eagles circle. Further in, he stared at the myriad of tiny waterfalls that plunged off the top of the cliffs and only managed to get halfway to the sea before being lost in clouds of white spray. By now he was wearing a light leather jerkin like the other soldiers, though the worst of his burns were still wrapped in bandages. Tarn had even managed to find him a black shirt with a crude silver hawk painted on it.
    ‘You’re one of us now,’ he said. ‘I won’t ask you to take a turn at the oars just yet, but don’t worry, we’ll make up for it once your skin’s healed. A good dose of latrine duty, I think.’ He grinned.
    The ship eased on through the channel for the rest of the day and into the early part of the night. When Berren next climbed up onto the deck they were anchored in the middle of a wide curving bay, shielded on all sides by steep rocky cliffs. Boatloads of soldiers were already being ferried to the shore. Talon stood poised at the prow, his eyes on everything. When he saw Berren and Tarn, he beckoned them closer and pointed to the slopes at the edge of the bay.
    ‘Tarn, take your cohort up there. Find me a path to the top. Take a position on the ridge and send word to the rest of the company. You should find yourself looking down on another bay like this one and there should be a camp or a stronghold of some sort on the shore. There might even be a ship. We’ll be taking both but most of all I need to know about the ship. Send a runner to report what you see. If you think it’s safe to do so then scout ahead.’ His eyes glanced across to Berren, unreadable. ‘I’m still sending you back to Deephaven at the first chance we get, but you can go with Tarn for now. Unless he wants you kept out of the way, of course.’ He nodded towards where men were already climbing over a net thrown down the side of the ship to a boat waiting in the water. ‘That’s yours. Quick now!’
    Berren looked at Tarn, who shrugged his shoulders. ‘Happy enough to have you,’ he said. ‘If you think you can fight.’
    Berren followed Tarn to the boat and sat with him as it filled. There were another seventeen men in the cohort, too many for a single trip, and by the time they were together at the base of the cliff Tarn had already found the path that Talon had described. Berren ran ahead, up to where it dived into the wall of trees that lined the top of the ridge. He turned back, waved