Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows Read Online Free

my coming with you?”
    Taken by surprise, Vost nodded. “Aye, we need a few more hands. You’ll have to sign to a full tour of duty. Six months or more. What happened, Coby? Did you lose your girl?” The old sailor chuckled curiously, expecting the sad tale of a failed romance.
    “Something like that.” Cobiah didn’t bother to correct him. “Sign me up, Vost. I’ll take that berth.” He lifted his chin, stuffing the rag doll beneath one arm and reaching for Vost’s hand to pull him up the gangplank.
    Something in the calmness of his words quieted the old man’s protests and questions, and Vost simply nodded. “Come aboard, Cobiah of Lion’s Arch. You’re a mariner now.”
    —
    Outside the city of Lion’s Arch, the sun beat down on a vast and empty ocean. It twinkled on the foam of a thousand waves and shone warmly over the hulls and decks of massive ships that plunged into the sea spray. The galleon Indomitable heaved her bulk from the dock like a thick-shouldered bull, stiff and ungainly in the shallows. While her sailors called the chants and songs, she lowered her sails to catch an early wind, and they spread in wide white arches over the broad top deck. Angel’s wings . Cobiah looked up at them as he gave a hand to the sailors slinging ropes from canvas to canvas across the lower boom of the mast. Biviane’s wings.
    Cobiah stared very hard at the Indomitable ’s sails as the ship made her way into the open sea. He watched them as they caught the wind, putting the city of Lion’s Arch—and the only life he’d ever known—far behind.

C obiah woke in the cold, pale morning, his head spinning with illness and fatigue. Someone was shaking his hammock. He’d been conscious of it but too thick with sleep to rouse. As he struggled to focus, the pillow jerked out from under his head, and in a flash the whole hammock reeled and dumped him unceremoniously to the wooden boards of the deck.
    “Five bells, Cobiah!” Vost, weathered bosun of the Indomitable , shouted down at Cobiah with the hammock still twisting in his hand. With a baleful glare, the leathery sailor grunted, “Up, fer Kryta’s own sake! Wind’s out of the west if’n our compass’s boxed proper, and we’ve eased out of slack water and into sail. Time to heave the ropes, boy.”
    Cobiah lifted his head and scrambled to his feet despite the pitch and roll of the ship beneath him. “Aye, aye, sir,” he gasped, trying to put a false energy into his words. “I’m ready.” The tang of seawater, stronger than he’d ever smelled it, lingered all around him, and the dark brown boards sucked sunlight from the portholes as if jealous to see it roam free.
    Vost snorted. “Yer ready all right. Ready as a dolyak calf fresh out’n its mother. Get on yer feet and try notto puke up yer dinner, green gills. And see that you do better next time, or I’ll come with a bucket of seawater to dump over ye—wi’ a crab in it to pinch off yer nose.
    “Today’s crew inspection, sailor. Be up-deck in five, or be tossed out to sea.” The ship’s bell rang like thunder on the main deck, its shrill clang cutting through the old sailor’s snarls. With a grunt, Vost lost interest in Cobiah and stormed over to hound a man who’d been slow to find both boots.
    Cobiah joined several other young sailors splashing water on their faces and scrubbing combs through their unruly hair. It was dark here in the berth, hot from the press of sailors and stinking of sweat and grime, but still cleaner than many an alley in Lion’s Arch where Cobiah had slept on bad nights. Better food, too, and more of it—an entire apple to himself! He swiped one from the bowl and jammed it in his mouth.
    More eager now, he jerked his shoes onto his feet as he hopped after the others. He’d have to earn enough money to buy boots at the next harbor; these city slippers didn’t have enough traction for wet boards. Cobiah smiled around a bite of apple. Only seven days aboard the