The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3) (8 page)

Berren could barely keep his eyes open. The burns on his back hurt every bit as much as the floggings he’d had as a skag; this time though, he felt a warmth inside him. For the first time in his life he was part of a family. ‘He won’t like it,’ he said. ‘He’ll send me away. Just like his brother did.’

‘He might.’ Tarn tapped him lightly – even that sent a jolt of pain through him enough to make him wince. ‘But not today and tomorrow we’ll be at sea. Come on. Let’s get you seen to.’

PART TWO

THE PRINCE OF WAR

9

IT’S HARD TO KILL A WARLOCK

F
or three days Berren stayed below decks, lying flat on his front with some sweet-smelling salve lathered across his skin. He slept a lot and drank a lot. When he complained that he was bored, Tarn declared that he must be getting better and let him walk around the ship wearing a nightshirt. He had blisters the size of 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 to show that the path was good and then loped on into the woods. From the outside, in the sunlight, the leaves on the trees were a verdant green. From the gloom beneath though, they seemed nearly black, and only a little light reached through them. The ground was covered in a soft layer of moss and leaf mould and little else. The path vanished but Berren plunged on, marking as straight a line as he could. A minute later he emerged on the other side where the ridge fell sharply away again. Spread out below him, a semicircular bowl filled with trees sloped down to the water’s edge, and in the middle, close to the shore, three buildings sat in a clearing. A thin column of smoke rose from one. Out in the water a small ship lay at anchor. Everything as Talon had said. He stood still and listened. Far away someone was screaming.

Tarn came and settled next to him, the rest of the cohort arrayed at the edge of the trees. Berren scratched at the bandages on his shoulders. The skin underneath had started to itch and now it wouldn’t stop. ‘What are we doing here?’

More screams wafted up from below. ‘Slavers,’ said Tarn brusquely. He clenched and unclenched his fists, got up, paced for a bit and then sat down again. ‘It could be an hour before the rest of the company gets up here,’ he muttered. ‘Is there another way down?’

‘Not much cover on that slope,’ said someone. ‘Whole company goes down there at once, someone’s bound to see us.’

‘Bit steep too,’ said someone else. ‘Most likely someone will slip. Be a noise.’

‘Shouldn’t we wait for Talon?’ asked Berren, but the others ignored him and went on. They’d already made up their minds.

‘Aye. What you’d need is a small force to go in first. Can’t be too many of them down there.’

‘Take them by surprise before they can raise the alarm?’

‘Maybe get to that ship.’

‘About a cohort, I’d say.’

‘Aye.’

Tarn cocked his head. ‘Scout a path for the main force? Deal with the sentries? Is that us? You know what? I do seem to remember Talon said something about doing just that.’

A murmur of assent rose from the mercenaries. A moment later they were all on their feet, drawing straws to see who’d stay at the top and mark the path for Talon and the others when they came. That done, they began to pick their way down from the top of ridge. The first part was the worst, a sheet of rock a dozen feet high. Below that, a steep slope covered in springy tufts of grass fell away down towards the bottom of the bowl and more trees. Berren clambered down the rock face easily enough, while others simply jumped and then slid through the grass. From there, Tarn led them forward. The trees down here were different – the leaves lighter, sunlight streaming in through gaps in the foliage. The ground was covered with ferns and the soldiers crept among them, slow and silent.

Screams rang out again. The trees muffled the sound but everyone heard it. As they came closer, Tarn made a sudden gesture and the soldiers dropped. Berren did the same, although he had no idea what Tarn had seen. For a minute they stayed absolutely still. Then Tarn began to move again, hunched right down into the undergrowth. There was another short pause and he waved the rest of the cohort towards him.

‘I can smell the smoke on the air,’ he whispered. ‘When we’re close enough to see what this place is, we stay hidden unless I say otherwise. We stay out of sight until we see what’s here.’

More screams. This time they were sharp and clear. Tarn winced.

‘And once we’ve seen, then what?’ asked someone. ‘There can’t be more than a cohort here.’

Tarn ran his thumb across his throat. The rest of the soldiers nodded and grinned. ‘But we look first. No one moves until I say.’

At the edge of the trees Berren finally saw what the screaming was about. A crude wooden frame made from branches lashed together with ropes stood at the near end of the clearing. A man was tied to it, naked and spread-eagled. Three other men were clustered around him. They were untying him, and as they dragged him away back to the largest of the three buildings, Berren could see that the naked man’s back was bloody and raw. A minute later the men emerged again, hauling another man with them, kicking and struggling. They beat him until he stopped and soon had him tied to the frame. Berren looked away. He’d been on the wrong end of enough floggings in his years as a skag. ‘What is this?’ he whispered. ‘What is this place?’

Tarn shrugged. ‘Talon didn’t say. Could be all sorts of things. My guess is White Water Reavers.’ He spat. ‘Don’t see why anyone else would come all the way out into the middle of nowhere just to beat up a few slaves.’

Berren winced at the name. Pirates in small fast ships who sacked villages, killing the sick and the old and carrying away the rest to their ships to be sold as slaves to the insatiable Taiytakei. Word of them made veteran sailors turn pale and mutter words to the gods under their breath.

A sudden tension filled the air around him. Three more figures had appeared, walking towards the men at the whipping frame. One tall, two short, all three dressed from head to toe in grey. Berren could feel the silent snarls from the soldiers around him.

‘Death-mages!’ hissed Tarn, and almost as if he’d heard, the tallest of the three suddenly stopped. He turned and looked round, and now Berren saw his face.

Saffran Kuy. The warlock.

10

THE NECROMANCER AND THE PRINCESS

T
ime slowed. The warlock stared into the trees where Berren and Talon’s swords were hiding. The two other figures with him turned to stare as well. They were little more than children, a boy and a girl, although what children might be doing in a place like this was beyond Berren. He felt sick. A strange taste filled the air around him. He struggled to breathe. A few yards away, one of the soldiers sprang to his feet. Steel scraped on steel, swords drawn, and as one the mercenaries leaped forward and hurled themselves out of the trees. Berren stayed frozen, pinned like a butterfly by his memories of Deephaven. Of the warlock driving Berren’s own hand to cut out a piece of Berren’s own soul. Of the same hand striking down Radek of Kalda. If Kuy knew he was here, Berren was bound to obey the warlock’s every desire, just as he had when he’d murdered Radek.

Saffran Kuy turned to face the rush of soldiers. His hands twirled. Dark smoke boiled in the air around him and then broke into pieces, each piece darting outwards. The shadows struck Tarn and his men and coiled around their throats, yet Tarn and the others seemed not to notice. Then Kuy turned and hurried his two young charges away. The slavers who’d been flogging their prisoner ran with him.

Berren snapped out of his trance. He ran after the others, after the cries and shouts of surprise. Slavers still blinking in the sunlight were cut down where they stood, too shocked by the suddenness of Tarn’s onslaught to put up a fight. There were more men here than Tarn had thought. The soldiers seemed not to notice, though – they were after the warlock, chasing him down with a vicious certainty of purpose – sure of their victory; but Berren had seen those shadows before, wrapped around Radek’s throat, paralysing him. They were all in terrible danger and they didn’t even know it!

More slavers emerged, put to the sword before they understood what was happening. Kuy scuttled into the building from where the man on the whipping frame had been dragged. Tarn charged after him with his cohort; Berren followed more cautiously, skirting fallen bodies on the beaten earth. Some of the slavers weren’t dead yet; some reached out for him with their hands or their eyes, silently pleading for help; those who were hurt but knew they might yet live watched him with fear, hobbling or crawling away as fast as they could. Still more of them spilled out into the light, shouting and squinting and waving clubs and axes. Berren ignored them. He ran after Tarn and the rest into the building that had swallowed Kuy.