Beginning an Ending is the 3rd book in Danny Birt's epic high fantasy series, the Laurian Pentology.
Excerpt:
The monk-general viewed the ship for obvious aberrations. She knew her senses had not been wrong. Something had definitely climbed up the side of the ship from the water. To climb a sheer wet wall of wood something would have to have claws and, in her experience, few things with claws were civilized.

Had there not been a flash of lightning from the omnipresent clouds, Lenale might have missed seeing the crouched lump perching like a vulture atop the ship's rail. It was so stable that it might have been a carved gargoyle to match the ship's figurehead, had she not known that it had not been there at the start of the voyage.

In a trice, Lenale was pounding across the deck with one mace across her chest and one raised to strike...