Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Page 15

  El Tiburón came forward. A boot stepped onto my blade and held my arm in place, and dimly I wondered if the blade had a quick-release buckle even though it would do me no good, as the tip of his sword nudged my neck, ready for the final lethal strike . . .

  “Enough,” came the cry from the compound door. Squinting through a veil of blood I saw the guards part and Torres step through, followed closely by DuCasse. The two Templars shouldered El Tiburón aside, and with the merest flicker of irritation in his eyes—the hunter denied his kill—the enforcer stepped away. I wasn’t sad to see him go.

  I gasped ragged breath. My mouth filled with blood and I spat as Torres and DuCasse crouched, studying me like two medical men examining a patient. When the Frenchman reached for my forearm I half expected him to feel for my pulse but instead he disengaged the hidden blade, unclipped it with practised fingers, then tossed it away. Torres looked at me, and I wondered if he really was as disappointed as he looked, or whether it was theatrics. He took hold of my other hand, removed my Templar ring and pocketed it.

  “What is your true name, rogue?” said Torres.

  Disarmed as I was, they let me pull myself to a sitting position. “It’s, ah . . . Captain Pissoff.”

  Again I spat close to DuCasse’s shoe, and he looked from the gobbet of blood to me with a sneer. “Nothing but a filthy peasant.” He moved to strike me, but Torres held him back. Torres had been looking around the courtyard at the bodies, as though trying to assess the situation.

  “Where is The Sage?” he asked. “Did you set him free?”

  “I had nothing to do with that, much as I wish I did,” I managed.

  As far as I was concerned The Sage had either been sprung by Assassin friends or staged an escape himself. Either way, he was out—out of harm’s way and in possession of the one secret we all wanted: The Observatory location. My trip was a wasted one.

  Torres looked at me and must have seen the truth in my eyes. His Templar affiliations made him my enemy, but there was something in the old man I liked, or respected, at least. Perhaps he saw something in me, a sense that maybe we weren’t so different. One thing I knew for certain was that if the decision had been left to DuCasse, I’d have been watching my guts drop to the compound floor; instead, Torres stood up and signalled to his men.

  “Take him to the ports. Send him to Seville with the treasure fleet.”

  “To Seville?” queried DuCasse.

  “Yes,” replied Torres.

  “But we can interrogate him ourselves,” said DuCasse. I heard the cruel smile in his voice. “Indeed . . . it would be a pleasure.”

  “Which is exactly why I intend to entrust the job to our colleagues in Spain,” said Torres firmly. “I hope this is not a problem for you, Julien?”

  Even fogged by pain I could hear the irritation in the Frenchman’s voice.

  “Non, monsieur,” he replied.

  Still, he took a great pleasure in knocking my lights out.

  THIRTY-TWO

  When I awoke I was on the floor of what looked like the lower deck of a galleon. A large galleon, it was, the kind that looked like it was used to transport . . . people. My legs were gripped by iron bilboes—big, immovable manacles that were scattered all around the deck, some empty, some not.

  Not far away I could make out more bodies in the gloom of the deck. More men back there, at a guess maybe a dozen or so, shackled just as I was, but in what sort of shape it was difficult to tell from the low groans and mumblings that reached my ears. At the other end of the deck was piled what I took to be the captives’ possessions—clothes, boots, hats, leather belts, packs and chests. In among them, I thought I saw my robes, still dirty and bloody from the fight in the prison compound.

  You remember my saying how lower decks had their own smell? Well, this one had a different smell altogether. The smell of misery. The smell of fear.

  A voice said, “Eat it fast,” and a wooden bowl landed with a dull thump by my bare feet before the black-leather boots of a guard retreated. I saw sunlight from a hatch and heard the clip-clop of a ladder being climbed.

  Inside the bowl sat a dry flour biscuit and a splodge of oatmeal. Not far away sat a black man, and, like me, he was eyeing the food dubiously.

  “You hungry?” I asked him.

  He said nothing, made no move to reach for the food. Instead he reached to the manacles at his feet and began to work at them, on his face an expression of profound concentration.

  At first I thought he was wasting his time, but as his fingers worked, sliding between his feet and the irons, his eyes went to me. Though he said nothing, I thought I saw in them the ghost of painful experience. His hands went to his mouth and for a moment he looked like a cat cleaning itself, until the same hand dipped into the oatmeal, mixing the goo inside with saliva and then using it to lubricate his foot in the manacle.

  Then I knew what he was doing and could only watch in admiration and hope as he continued to do it, greasing the foot more and more until it was slippery enough to . . .

  Try. He looked at me, silenced any encouragement before it even left my lips, then twisted and pulled at the same time.

  He would have yelled in pain if he wasn’t concentrating on keeping so quiet, and his foot, when it came free of the leg-iron, was covered in a revolting mixture of blood and spit and oatmeal. But it was free and neither of us wanted to eat the oatmeal anyway.

  He glanced back up the deck towards the ladder and both of us steeled ourselves against the appearance of a guard, then he began working at the other foot and was soon free. Crouched on the wood with his head cocked, he listened as footsteps from above us seemed to move towards the hatch, then, thankfully, moved away again.

  There was a moment in which I wondered if he might simply leave me there. After all, we were strangers, he owed me nothing. Why should he waste time and endanger his own bid for freedom by helping me?

  But I’d been about to let him eat the oatmeal and apparently that counted for something, because in the next instant, after a moment’s hesitation—perhaps he wondered himself about the wisdom of helping me—he scrambled over towards me, checked the shackles, then hurried over to an unseen section of the deck behind me, returning with keys.

  His name was Adewalé he told me as he opened the shackles. I thanked him quietly, rubbing my ankles and whispering, “Now, what’s your plan, mate?”

  “Steal a ship,” he said simply.

  I liked the sound of that. First, though, I retrieved my robes and hidden blade and added a pair of leather braces and a leather jacket to my ensemble.

  Meanwhile my new friend Adewalé was using the keys to release the prisoners. I snatched another set from a nail on the wall and joined him.

  “There’s a catch to this favour,” I told the first man I came to, as my fingers worked the key in his restraints. “You’re sailing with me.”

  “I’d follow you to hell for this, mate . . .”

  Now there were more men standing on the deck and free of shackles than there were still restrained, and perhaps those above had heard something, because suddenly the hatch was flung open and the first of the guards thundered down the steps with his sword drawn.

  “Hey,” he said, but “hey” turned out to be his final word. I’d already fitted my hidden blade (and had a moment’s reflection that though I had only been wearing it for such a short space of time, it still felt somehow familiar to me, as though I had been wearing it for years) and with a flick of my forearm engaged the blade, then stepped forward and introduced the blade to the guard, driving it deep into his sternum.

  It wasn’t exactly stealthy or subtle. I stabbed him so hard that the blade punctured his back and pinned him to the steps until I wrenched him free. Now I saw the boots of a second soldier and the tip of his sword as reinforcements arrived. Back-handed, I sliced the blade just below his knees and he screamed and toppled, losing his sword and his balance, one of his lower legs cut to the bone and pumping blood to the deck a
s he joined his mate on the wood.

  By now it was a full-scale mutiny, and the freed men ran to the piles of confiscated goods and reclaimed their own gear, arming themselves with cutlasses and pistols, pulling boots on. I saw squabbles breaking out—already!—over whose items were whose, but there was no time to play arbitrator. A clip around the ear was what it took and our new team was ready to go into action. Above us we heard the sounds of rushing feet and panicked shouting in Spanish as the guards prepared themselves for the uprising.

  Just then the ship was suddenly rocked by what I knew was a gust of wind. Across the deck I caught Adewalé’s eye and he mouthed something to me. One word: “Hurricane.”

  Again it was as though the ship had been rammed as a second gust of wind hit us. Now time was against us and the battle needed to be won fast. We had to take our own ship, because these winds, furious as they were, were nothing—nothing—compared to the force of a full-scale hurricane.

  You could time its arrival by counting the delay between the first gusts. You could see the direction the hurricane was coming from. And if you were an experienced seaman, which I was by now, then you could use the hurricane to your advantage. So as long as we set sail soon, we could outrun any pursuers.

  Yes, that was it. The terror of the hurricane had been replaced by the notion that we could make it work in our favour. Use the hurricane, outrun the Spanish. A few words in Adewalé’s ear and my new friend nodded and began to spread news of the plan among the rest of the men.

  They would be expecting an uncoordinated, haphazard attack through the main hatch of the quarter-deck.

  So let’s make them pay for underestimating us.

  Directing some of the men to stay near the foot of the steps and make the noise of men preparing to attack, I led the rest to the stern, where we broke through into the sick bay, then stealthily climbed steps to the galley.

  In the next instant we poured out onto the main deck, and sure enough the Spanish soldiers stood unawares, their backs turned and their muskets trained on the quarter-deck hatch.

  They were careless idiots who had not only turned their backs on us but brought muskets to a sword-fight, and they paid for it with steel in their guts and across their throats. For a moment the quarter-deck was a battlefield as we ruthlessly pressed home the advantage our surprise attack gave us, until at our feet lay dead or dying Spaniards, while the last of them threw themselves overboard in panic, and we stood and caught our breath.

  Though the sails were furled, the ship rocked as it was punched by another gust of wind. The hurricane would be upon us any minute. From other ships along the harbour belonging to the treasure fleet, we saw soldiers handing out pikes and muskets as they began to prepare themselves for our attack.

  We needed a faster ship and Adewalé had his eye on one, already leading a group of our men across the gang-board and to the quay. Soldiers on the harbour died by their blades. There was a crack of muskets and some of our men fell, but already we were rushing the next galleon beside us, a beautiful-looking ship—the ship I was soon to make my own.

  Then we were up on it, just as the sky darkened, a suitable backdrop for the battle and a terrifying augury of what was to come.

  Wind whipped at us, growing stronger, hammering us in repeated gusts. You could see the Spanish soldiers were in disarray, as terrified of the approaching storm as they were of the escaped prisoners, unable to avoid the onslaught of either.

  The battle was bloody and vicious, but over quickly and the galleon was ours. For a moment I wondered if Adewalé would want to assume command; indeed he had every right to do so—this man had not only set me free but led the charge that helped win us the boat. If he did decide to captain his own ship, I would have to respect that, find my own command and go my own way.

  But no. Adewalé wanted to sail with me as my quartermaster.

  I was more than grateful. Not only that he was willing to serve with me, but that he chose not to take his skills elsewhere. In Adewalé I had a loyal quartermaster, a man who would never rise up against me in mutiny, provided I was a just and fair captain.

  I knew that then, at the beginning of our friendship, just as I know it now with all those years of comradeship between us.

  (Ah, but The Observatory. The Observatory came between us.)

  We set sail just as the masts unfurled and the first tendrils of the coming storm fattened our sails. Cross-winds battered us as we left the harbour and I glanced behind from my place at the tiller to see the remaining ships of the treasure fleet being assaulted by wind and rain. At first their masts swung crazily from side to side like uncontrolled pendulums, then they were clashing as the storm hit. Without ready sails they were sitting ducks and it gladdened my heart to see them knocked into matchwood by the arriving hurricane.

  The air seemed to grow colder and colder around us. Above I saw clouds gathering, scudding fast across the sky and blocking out the sun. Next we were lashed with wind and rain and sea-spray. Around us the waves seemed to grow and grow, towering mountains of water with foaming peaks, every one of them about to drown us, tossing us from one huge canyon of sea to another.

  The poultry were washed overboard. Men hung on to cabin doors. I heard screams as unlucky deck-hands were snatched off the ship. The galley fire was extinguished. All hatches and cabin doors battened down. Only the bravest and most skilful men dared scale the rat-lines to try and manage the canvas.

  The foremast snapped and I feared for the mainmast and mizzen, but they held, thank God, and I gave silent praise for this fast, plucky ship that had been brought to us by fate.

  The sky was a patchwork of black cloud that every now and then parted to allow rays of sunshine through, as if the sun were being kept prisoner behind them; as though the weather was taunting us. Still we kept going, with three men at the tiller and men hanging on to the rigging as though trying to fly a huge, abominable kite, desperately trying to keep us ahead of the storm. To slow down would be to surrender to it. To surrender to it would be to die.

  But we didn’t die, not that day. Behind us the rest of the treasure fleet was smashed in port, but just the one ship containing us freed prisoners managed to escape and the men we had—a skeleton crew—pledged their allegiance to me and Adewalé and agreed with my proposal that we set sail immediately for Nassau. At last, I was going back to Nassau, to see Edward and Benjamin, and rejoin the republic of pirates I had missed so much.

  I was looking forward to showing them my ship. My new ship. I christened it the Jackdaw.

  THIRTY-THREE

  SEPTEMBER 1715

  “You’ve named your new brig after a bird?”

  Any other man and I would have drawn my pistol or perhaps engaged my hidden blade and made him eat his words. But this was Edward Thatch. Not Blackbeard yet, oh no. He had yet to grow the face fur, which would give him his more famous alias, but he still had all that braggadocio that was as much his trade-mark as his plaited beard and the lit fuses he would wear in it.

  Benjamin was there too. He sat with Edward beneath the sailcloth awnings of The Old Avery, a tavern on the hill overlooking the harbour, one of my very favourite places in the world and my very first port of call on entering Nassau—a Nassau I was pleased to see had hardly changed: the stretch of purest blue ocean across the harbour, the captured ships that littered the shores, English flags flying from their masts, the palms, the shanty houses. The huge Fort Nassau towered above us, its death’s-head flag flapping in the easterly breeze. I tell a lie. It had changed. It was busier than it had been before. Some nine hundred men and women now made it their base, I discovered, seven hundred of them pirates.

  Edward and Benjamin—planning raids and drinking, drinking and planning raids, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

  Nearby was another pirate I recognized as James Kidd, who sat by himself. Some said he was the son of William Kidd. But for now my attention went to my old mates, who both rose to greet me. Here, there were none of the forma
lities, the insistence on politeness and decorum that shackles the rest of society. No, I was given a full, proper pirate greeting, embraced in huge bear-hugs by Benjamin and Edward, the pirate scourges of the Bahamas, but really soft old bears, with grateful tears in their eyes to see an old friend.

  “By God, you’re a sight for salty eyes,” said Benjamin. “Come you in and have a drink.”

  Edward gave Adewalé a look. “Ahoy, Kenway. Who’s this?”

  “Adewalé, the Jackdaw’s quartermaster.”

  That was when Edward made his crack about the Jackdaw’s name. Neither of them had yet made mention of the robes I wore, but perhaps I had that pleasure to come. Certainly there was a moment, after the greeting, when they both gave me long, hard looks and I wondered whether those looks were as much to gawp at my clothes as to see the change in me, because the fact was that I had been but a boy when I first met them, but I had grown from a feckless, arrogant teenager, an errant son, a love-lorn but unreliable husband into something else—a man scarred and made hard by battle, who was not quite so careless with his feelings, not so liberal with his emotions, a cold man in many respects, a man whose true passions were buried deep.

  Perhaps they saw that, my two old friends. Perhaps they took note of that hardening of boy to a man.

  I was looking for men to crew my ship, I told them.

  “Well,” said Edward, “there’s scores of capable men about, but use caution. A shipload of the king’s sailors showed up a fortnight back, causing trouble and knocking about like they own the place.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Was it Woodes Rogers’s work? Had he sent out an advance party? Or was there another explanation? The Templars. Looking for me, maybe? Looking for something else? The stakes were high then. I should know. I’d done more than my fair share to increase them.

  While recruiting more men for my ship, I learned a little more about the presence of the English in the Bahamas. Men that Adewalé and I spoke to talked of seeing soldiers prancing round in the king’s colours. The British wanted us out; well of course they did, we were a thorn in His Majesty’s side, a dirty great stain on the Red Ensign, but it felt as though there was, if anything, an increase in British interest. So it was that when I next met Edward, Ben and, joining us, James Kidd in The Old Avery, I was sure to speak out of earshot and extra wary of unfamiliar faces.