Prince Thief (6 page)

It was impossible to tell when I left the boat; impossible, as the sea flooded in, to say what was inside and what was out. For a moment, I couldn’t even tell sky from sea – but the flood of icy brine into my throat answered that one quickly enough.

I floundered, clutched for where I thought the boat’s shattered timbers must be, realised they weren’t and went under – was
sucked
under, as if the water below were hollow and I was being dragged into the gaping void.

I didn’t get far. My ankle dashed against what could only be a rock, and as the impact rocked me over, my head glanced off another. I felt the skin tear and a deep chill, as though the salt water were trying to drain into me. Searching with my good ankle, I made contact with something hard and jagged, kicked off.

I broke the surface, gasping. Through blood-slick hair and stinging salt, I saw the boat, sheared almost in two, flopping on the rocks like a gutted fish. There were men swimming, a couple just floating, one clutching to the mast. I couldn’t see Estrada; I couldn’t even see Saltlick, and that seemed so absurd that I tried to sway myself around to look for him.

All I succeeded in doing was slapping the breath from my lungs, as a wave tossed me against a jut of broken timber. I recoiled, disorientated, and found there was nowhere to go but down. The waves closed back over me, and somehow my feet were facing up towards the surface now. The more I flailed, the deeper I seemed to carry myself. My head stung, where the cold had settled. My ankle, by contrast, was on fire.

I was dragging myself down and down. Every time I thought I’d righted myself, the dimming light of the surface only faded further. I was sure I’d hit more rocks, and the prospect terrified me; it only came to me far too late that the alternative was drowning a little deeper. By then, the chill and fire both had moved into my lungs, working to push out whatever air was left there, leaving my head and foot merely numb.

I wanted urgently to breathe; air or water, I didn’t care which. Only some small instinct kept me from trying, and I knew I couldn’t listen to it for much longer. The darkness was descending, or else I still was. Either way, I might never have time for that last breath if I didn’t take it then. I knew how good it would feel – as good as anything ever had. Whatever came after, it would be worth it...

Something closed around the scruff of my neck and suddenly I was moving again, the darkness cascading away. I took the breath I’d been longing for and of course there was nothing but water. When I tried to choke it up, there was nowhere for it to go – and with that realisation, light exploded in my eyes, noise sluiced through me. It could only be dying, though I’d somehow imagined death would be quiet and this was anything but. In hopeless desperation, I tried for one more, final breath...

Air smashed into my chest, just as water gushed out in a great splutter. I took another breath, another, each one pumping what seemed a bucket’s load of seawater back into its rightful home. Only on the fourth breath did the light begin to congeal into a picture, the sound resolve into the pound of waves.

I was further from the boat, which looked almost nothing like a boat now. Even as I grasped what had happened, why I was alive, I swung a little in Saltlick’s grip and he came into view. He was battered and bloody, hanging one-handed from a crest of rock, holding me half-free of the ocean’s savage churn. He gave me one glance, managed the palest shadow of a grin, and began to move.

I’d never felt so helpless in my life. Saltlick’s path was a crude concourse of rocks, some thrusting from under the waves, slick with foam and thrashed with white water, most just beneath its surface. It would have been lethal even without his wounded leg or a sodden thief hanging from one fist. For all Saltlick’s agility, I was sure he’d slip at any moment and plunge us both back into the depths, or else dash my head into jelly against the reef. I’d have pleaded with him to put me down if I’d thought I could possibly speak, or that he could possibly hear.

Then Saltlick finally
did
let go, and I fell to my knees, still hacking up water – but infinitely relieved to feel something solid beneath me. I’d have stayed that way, probably passed out that way, but the sea was already sucking round my legs and if there was one thing I wanted to be away from, it was the sea. With a hand on Saltlick’s knee, I dragged myself back to my feet, not sure until the last moment that my ankle would hold me.

We were stood upon the beach I’d seen before. Though it ran almost out of sight in either direction, it wasn’t much more than a crescent of gravel flayed by white-edged waves. There were other figures crawling or staggering their way up it, clustering into bedraggled knots, one or two even trying to haul in salvage from the boat before the sea sucked it away. I spotted Estrada nearby, half-supported by Navare, and was surprised by how much relief I felt.

But that wasn’t the time for relief. For seeing Estrada, I saw too where she was looking – saw where the other boat had landed further up the shore, run aground on the dismal shale. Already men were tumbling from its side, their uniforms drab and salt-stained but their drawn swords vivid in the early evening light.

Our party were already gathering themselves, the guardsmen drawing their own blades, the buccaneers producing wicked-looking dirks from the sheaths they wore low behind their backs; even Estrada had a sword in her hand, though I’d never noticed her wearing one. They’d have made an intimidating sight if one amongst them hadn’t been half drowned, or if the palace soldiers hadn’t been closing with such grim and steady composure.

Fortunate, then, that I wasn’t the only one with sense enough to read the odds. “Fall back!” cried Navare – and though his voice was weak against the crash of the surf, everyone turned to look where he was pointing. What Navare had spied, what he was already leading us towards, was a gully in the cliff side, its upper edge breaching onto the higher ground above. There was no trace of a path and it was too hard a climb for men in our state, but about its base were a half-ring of boulders that had slid down in some earlier age, and those offered a better point of defence than anywhere on the beach.

There was a little false bravado at the prospect of so swift a retreat, but mostly everyone seemed glad of a hope, however slim, that they might not have to lay down their lives on that miserable shore. I wasn’t quite the first to arrive at the boulders but I came close, finding unexpected energy in tormented muscles. Even Saltlick failed to outpace me – and I couldn’t help noticing how heavily he still favoured his good leg.

Inside, the crude crescent barrier was less of an obstruction than it had appeared, with a wide gap on one side and considerable space within. Fortunately, its best protection lay on the side the palace troops were approaching from, and even the open span was narrow enough to defend. I climbed a little way up the incline, the better to see what was happening while playing as small a part in it as possible, and watched as the others fit themselves into gaps under Navare’s direction – so that in a mere few moments, the natural barrier really had come to look like a fortress in miniature.

The resulting battle didn’t take long; as long as it took our opponents to realise that, with their crossbow strings wet and momentarily useless from the time at sea, even a few injured and half-drowned men could hold that boulder enclave against them. In fact, from my perspective – and it was true that my only contribution was a couple of thrown stones that came closer to hitting our side than theirs – it all seemed more a sham than an actual combat. There was some rattling of sabres, much shouting, and perhaps a thigh or shoulder nicked somewhere along the line. But the resulting retreat was eager and orderly enough to imply that the palace soldiers recognised a hopeless cause when they saw it.

Then again, what reason did they have to hurry? If their goal was to keep us from our destination then they’d already achieved it. If they wanted us dead, they had time enough for that as well. Fighting an unfavourable fight in the deepening gloom was a risk they had no need to take.

Estrada watched them go, squinting against the darkness as the last ruddy sunlight spilt against the waves and drained into their furrows. She waited until they were back around their own boat, and continued to watch until there was no light to watch by. Navare, meanwhile, posted sentries at the more conspicuous gaps in our defence and set others to looking after the injured – a difficult task when, if you counted cuts and scrapes, almost everyone fell into that category.

Having already clambered down by then, I’d confirmed to my satisfaction that neither the wound on my ankle nor the gash on my forehead were likely to prove fatal. A tentative inspection had confirmed that both were skin deep, and the saltwater had done a decent job of cleaning them. Still, I felt tired unto death – as though a part of me really had drowned out there, and what Saltlick had hauled from the depths was nothing but a tattered shell.

Once Estrada and Navare were confident that we’d seen the last of the palace guardsmen for at least the immediate future, Navare called everyone together. “We’ll need a fire,” Estrada began, “if we’re going to last out the night.”

“Especially since there’s every chance they’ll come at us again before dawn,” Navare agreed. “I doubt we’re the first boat to fall foul of those rocks, so there might be driftwood out there somewhere. After what you’ve just been through I won’t force anyone, but a couple of volunteers would be acting in all our interests.”

“I’ll go.” I wasn’t certain what impulse made me say it. I was dressed for the task, it had to be said, my dark clothes and cloak already disappearing into the twilight. That in itself was hardly a reason to risk my life, however. Then again, perhaps that was just it. I didn’t anticipate much within our enclave besides a drawn-out death. Outside at least I could weigh up possibilities and maybe see something I was missing.

No one tried to argue with me – though I couldn’t help wondering, when Navare sent out a couple of his men who’d also volunteered in different directions to my own, if it wasn’t his way of saying he didn’t expect me back. I was assigned the stretch of beach directly ahead – which meant at least that the death cries of the man to my right might alert me to approaching danger.

I squeezed through a gap in two boulders. The narrow band of sand that clung to the base of the cliffs was silvery in the moonlight, rippled as oft-worn fabric. Beyond it, below the strip of lead-grey gravel that made the greater part of the beach, the sea frothed and seethed like an old man sucking at his teeth.

I’d overestimated the good my cloak would do me. Beneath the moon’s hoary glow, I stood out just as clearly as I would have clothed in the brightest motley. I considered scurrying back to the defence of the rocks, but what betrayed me was also in my favour, for I could see clear to the landed boat and its entourage of soldiers, and I could make out one of Navare’s men moving between them and me. Out there, at least I’d have plenty of warning of an attack – and I could think, without the stink of twenty waterlogged sailors in my nostrils.

Or so I’d imagined, anyway. By the time I’d reached the waterline, I was beginning to realise that whatever thoughts my exhausted mind might offer, they weren’t the useful, escape-enabling sort I’d been hoping for. It seemed the ocean depths had pummelled all the fight out of me, and I found it hard even to remember why I’d been so angry at Estrada. The truth was that I was at a loss. I’d failed at thievery, failed at heroism, and now here I was in the arse end of nowhere, staring death in the face once again and lacking the energy to much care. If there were any fairness in the world I’d be in a tavern at that moment, narrating my legendary adventures in exchange for cups of wine, and thinking fondly of the part I’d played in returning Saltlick and his people home.

A nice dream. But it had burned to nothing the moment Alvantes and Estrada had made their truce with that villain Mounteban, and now all I could do was wander down this beach grey as ashes, remembering it fondly.

I shook myself. No use in getting maudlin. I’d survived this far, and through worse than this. Maybe I’d never be regaled for my heroism, maybe the King would put Altapasaeda to fire and the sword, maybe Saltlick would never see his distant home again, but there would always be taverns – and surely that was enough to keep me going for one more night at least?

It was hard to see much past the turns of the cliff that closed either end of the beach, but I didn’t think I’d be swimming out. It crossed my mind that there must be timbers from our boat around, that perhaps I could turn one into a crude raft. A ludicrous plan; the water would be freezing by now, and there was no reason to imagine I’d fare better on the rocks for a second attempt. I turned around, stared back towards our rocky barbican. More realistically, once I’d recovered a little I might be able to climb that ravine in the cliff side. Yet the best I could hope for would be to snatch a few uncomfortable hours rest and make a try before dawn, and I doubted I’d get halfway like that. No, it would take more strength than I had to make that tricky ascent in the dark.

I could see no option except to attempt the fool’s errand I’d come out there on. I might as well make a try of it before I returned empty handed. To my astonishment, however, less than a minute had passed before my eye snagged on something that looked like bleached bone and turned out to be ancient wood, desiccated and salt-stained. After that, I began to hunt seriously, drawn by the prospect of a little warmth – and sure enough, Navare had been right. Some of my tiredness turned to enthusiasm as I chanced on more chunks of weatherworn timber, and for a while the quest fully absorbed me.

My excitement waned quickly. Aside from the first piece I’d discovered, nothing I found was much more than a sliver; we’d have a scanty fire indeed if the others hadn’t fared better. Still, at least I’d shown willing. I was beginning to regret the previous day’s outburst at Estrada, and maybe my small haul would offer a means back into her good graces.

Then, as I turned back, something else caught my eye. It was difficult to make sense of at first; a pattern upon the rocks nearest the shore, a curious checked design drawn over the weed-decked stone. Finally, after a few moments of staring, I understood what I was looking at: a net, snagged on one of the higher protrusions and draping down, most of its length beneath the water. It could only have come from our boat; probably it was the same we’d used to haul in Saltlick at the dock.