Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  He was down, with a leg bleeding badly, defending himself with his sword and calling for a gun. I tossed him mine and he caught it, using it to fell a man coming at him with raised cutlass.

  He was dead, though. We both knew it. We all knew it.

  ‘In a world without gold, we could have been heroes!’ he shouted as they teemed over him.

  Maynard led a renewed attack upon him and Blackbeard, seeing his nemesis up close, bared his teeth and swung his sword. Maynard screeched, his hand gushing crimson as he pulled away and his sword fell, its guard broken. From his belt he snatched a pistol, fired it, catching Edward on the shoulder and sending him back to his knees where he grunted and swung his sword as the enemy moved in on him remorselessly.

  Around us I could see more of our men falling. I drew my second pistol, fired, and gave one of their men a third eye, but now they were upon me, swarming over me. I cut men down. I cut them ruthlessly. And the knowledge that my next attacker would die the same way kept a few of them at bay, giving me the chance to glance over and see Edward dying by a thousand cuts, on his knees but fighting still, surrounded by vultures who hacked and chopped at him with their blades.

  With a shout of frustration and anger I stood and whirled with outstretched hands, my blade forming a perimeter of death that sent men flailing backwards. I snatched the initiative, shooting forward and drop-kicking the man in front of me so that his chest and face became my springboard and I broke through the barrier of men surrounding me. In the air my blade flashed and two men fell away with open veins, blood hitting the deck with an audible slap. I landed then sprang across the deck to help my friend.

  But never made it. From my left came a sailor who stopped my progress, a huge brute of a man who thumped into me, the two of us moving at such speed that neither of us could stop the momentum that took us over the side of the gunwale and into the water below.

  I saw one thing before I fell. I saw my friend’s throat open and blood sheet down his front, his eyes rolling to the top of his head as Blackbeard fell for a final time.

  46

  December, 1718

  You’ve not heard a man screaming in pain until you’ve heard a man who’s just had his kneecap blown off screaming in pain.

  That was the punishment dealt by Charles Vane to the captain of the British slave ship we’d boarded. The same British slave ship had virtually scuttled Vane’s own vessel, so we’d had to sail the Jackdaw nearby and allow his men on board. Vane had been furious about that, but even so that was no excuse to lose his temper. After all, this whole expedition had been his idea.

  He’d hatched his plan soon after Edward’s death.

  ‘So Thatch has been topped?’ he said as we sat in the captain’s quarters of the Jackdaw, with Calico Jack drunk and asleep nearby, lying straight-legged in the chair in a way that seemed to defy gravity. He was another who had refused to take the king’s pardon, so we were stuck with him.

  ‘He was outnumbered,’ I said of Blackbeard. The image was an unwelcome new arrival in my mind. ‘I couldn’t reach him.’

  I remembered falling, seeing him die, blood pouring from his throat, hacked down like a rabid dog. I took another long swig of rum to banish the image.

  They’d hung his head from the bowsprit as a trophy, so I’d heard.

  And they called us scum.

  ‘Devil damn the man, he was fierce, but his heart was divided,’ said Charles. He’d been worrying at my tabletop with the point of his knife. Any other guest I’d have told to stop but not Charles Vane. A Charles Vane defeated by Woodes Rogers. A Charles Vane mourning the death of Blackbeard. Most of all, a Charles Vane with a knife in his hand.

  He was right, though, with what he said. Even if Blackbeard had lived there was little doubt he intended to leave the life behind. To stand at our head and lead us out of the wilderness was not something that had appealed to Edward Thatch.

  We lapsed into silence. Perhaps we were both thinking of Nassau and how it belonged in the past. Or perhaps we were both wondering what to do in the future, because after some moments, Vane took a deep breath, seemed to pull himself together and slapped his fists to his thighs.

  ‘Right, Kenway,’ he announced, ‘I’ve been musing on this plan of yours … This … Observatory you was going on about. How do we know it exists?’

  I shot him a sideways look to see if he was joking. After all, he wouldn’t have been the first. I’d been much mocked for my tales of the Observatory and wasn’t in the mood for any more, not now anyway. But he wasn’t, he was deadly serious, leaning forward in his chair, awaiting my answer. Calico Jack slumbered on.

  ‘We find a slave ship called the Princess. Aboard should be a man called Roberts. He can lead us to it.’

  Charles seemed to think. ‘All them slavers work for the Royal African Company. Let’s find any one of their ships and start asking some questions.’

  But unfortunately for us all, the first Royal African Company ship we encountered blew holes in Vane’s ship, the Ranger, meaning he needed to be rescued. At last we boarded the slave ship, where our men had already quietened down the slaver’s crew. There we found the captain.

  ‘This captain claims the Princess sails out of Kingston every few months,’ I told Vane.

  ‘All right. We’ll set a course,’ said Vane, and the decision was made: we were heading for Kingston, and no doubt the slave captain would have been okay and left unharmed, had he not called out angrily, ‘You made a hash of my sails and rigging, you jackanapes. You owe me a share.’

  Every man there who knew Charles Vane could have told you what would happen next. Not exactly. But the kind of thing: terrible violence, no remorse. So it was at that moment, when he swung round, drew his gun and strode over to the captain in one quick and furious movement. Then he put the muzzle of the gun to the captain’s knee, his other hand held to stop himself being splashed with blood. And pulled the trigger.

  It happened quickly. Matter-of-factly. And in the aftermath Charles Vane walked away, about to move past me.

  ‘Dammit, Vane!’

  ‘Oh, Charles, what a surly devil you are,’ said Calico Jack, and it was a rare moment of sobriety from Calico Jack, a fact that was almost as shocking as the captain’s piercing screams, but then the old drunkard was seemingly in the mood to challenge Charles Vane.

  Vane turned on his quartermaster. ‘Don’t fuck with me, Jack.’

  ‘It is my mandate to fuck with you, Charles,’ snapped Calico Jack, normally laid out drunk, but today in a mood to challenge Vane’s authority, it seemed. ‘Lads,’ he commanded, and as if on cue – as though they had been awaiting their chance – several men loyal to Calico Jack stepped forward with drawn weapons. We were outnumbered, but that didn’t stop Adewalé, about to draw his cutlass, only to feel the full weight of a guard across his face, which sent him crumpling to the deck.

  I found myself with a face full of pistol barrels when I moved forward to help.

  ‘See … The boys and I had a bit of a council while you were wasting time with this lot,’ said Calico Jack, indicating the captured slaver. ‘And they figured I’d be a fitter captain than you reckless dogs.’

  He gestured towards Adewalé, and my blood rose as he said, ‘This one I figure I may sell for a tenner in Kingston. But with you two, I can’t take any chances.’

  Surrounded, me, Charles, and our men were helpless to do anything. My mind reeled, wondering where it had all gone so wrong. Had we needed Blackbeard that much? Did we rely on him so heavily that things could go so terribly awry in his absence? It seems so. It seems so.

  ‘You’ll regret this day, Rackham,’ I hissed.

  ‘I regret most of them already,’ sighed the mutineer Calico Jack. His colourful Indian shirt was the last thing I saw as another man came forward clutching a black bag that he pulled over my head.

  47

  And that was how we found ourselves marooned on Providencia. After a month adrift on the damaged Ranger, that was. />
  Jack had left us food and weapons but we had no means of steering or sailing the ship, so it was a month at sea in which we tried and failed to repair the broken rigging and masts and spent most of the day manning the pumps in order to stay afloat; a month in which I’d had to listen to Vane ranting and raving all hours of the day and night. Shaking his fist at thin air, he was. ‘I’ll get ya Jack Rackham! I’ll open y’up. I’ll tear out your organs and string a bloody lute with them.’

  We spent Christmas 1718 on the Ranger, bobbing around like a discarded liquor bottle on the waves, praying for mercy from the weather. Just me and him. And of course we had no calendars or such, so it was impossible to say when Christmas fell or which day 1718 became 1719, but I’m prepared to wager I spent them listening to Charles Vane rage at the sea, at the sky, at me, and especially at his old mucker Calico Jack Rackham.

  ‘I’ll get ya! You see if I don’t, y’scurvy bastid!’

  And when I tried to remonstrate with him, hinting that perhaps his constant shouting was doing more harm to our morale than good, he turned on me.

  ‘Well, well, the fearsome Edward Kenway speaks!’ he’d bawl. ‘Pray tell us, cap’n, how to quit this predicament and tell us what genius you have for sailing a boat with no sails and no rudder.’

  How we didn’t kill each other during that time, I’ll never know, but by God we were glad to see land. We hooted with pleasure, clasped each other, jumped up and down. We launched a yawl from the stricken Ranger, and as night fell we rowed ashore then collapsed on the beach, exhausted but ecstatic that after a month drifting at sea we’d finally found land.

  The next morning we awoke to find the Ranger wrecked against the beach and cursed one another for failing to drop anchor.

  And then cursed our luck as we realized just how small it was, the island on which we were now marooned.

  Providencia, it was called, a small island with its fair share of history. A bloody history, at that. English colonists, pirates and the Spanish had done nothing but fight over it for the best part of a century. Forty years ago, the great pirate Captain Henry Morgan had set his cap at it, recaptured it from the Spanish and used it as his base for a while.

  By the time Vane and I set down upon the island, it was home to a few colonists, escaped slaves and convicts and the remnants of the Mosquito Indians who were native to it. You could explore the abandoned fort, but there was nothing much left. Nothing you could eat or drink anyway. And you could swim across to Santa Catalina, but then, that was even smaller. So mainly we spent the days fishing and finding frond oysters in small pools, and occasionally having a kind of snarling stand-off with groups of passing natives, ragged, wandering colonists or turtle fishermen. The colonists, in particular, always wore a wild, frightened look, as though they weren’t sure whether to attack or run away, and could just as well do either. Their eyes seemed to swivel in their sockets in different directions at once and they made odd, twitchy movements with dry, sun-parched lips.

  I turned to Charles Vane after one particular encounter, about to comment, and saw that he, too, was wearing a wild look, and his eyes seemed to swivel in their sockets, and he made odd, twitchy movements with his dry, sun-parched lips.

  Until whatever fragile cord holding Charles Vane together snapped one day, and off he went to start a new Providencia tribe. A tribe of one. I should have tried to talk him out of it. ‘Charles we must stick together.’ But I was sick to the back teeth of Charles Vane, and, anyway, it wasn’t like I’d seen the last of him. He took to stealing my oysters for a start, scuttling out of the jungle, hairy and unshaven, his clothes ragged and with a look of the madman in his eyes. He’d scoop up my just-caught frond oysters, curse me for a bastard then scuttle back into the undergrowth from which he would curse me some more. My days were spent on the beach, swimming, fishing or scanning the horizon for vessels, all the time knowing full well he was tracking me from within the undergrowth.

  On one occasion I tried to remonstrate with him. ‘Will you talk with me, Vane? Are you fixed on this madness?’

  ‘Madness?’ he responded. ‘Ain’t nothing mad about a man fighting to survive, is there?’

  ‘I mean you no harm, you corker. Let’s work this out like gentlemen.’

  ‘Ah. God, I’ve a bleedin’ headache on account of our jabbering. Now stay back and let me live in peace!’

  ‘I would if you’d stop filching the food I gather, and the water I find.’

  ‘I’ll stop nothing till you paid me back in blood. You was the reason we were out looking for slavers. You was the reason Jack Rackham took my ship!’

  You see what I had to contend with? He was losing his mind. He blamed me for things that were plainly his own fault. It was he who had suggested we go after the Observatory. It was he who’d caused our current predicament by killing the slaver captain. I had as much reason to hate him as he had to despise me. The difference between us was that I hadn’t lost my mind. At least not yet anyway. He was doing his best to remedy that, it seemed. He got crazier and crazier.

  ‘You and your fairy stories got us into this mess, Kenway!’

  He stayed in the bushes, like a rodent in the darkened undergrowth, curled up in roots, with his arms round tree trunks, crouched in his own stink and watching me with craven eyes. It began to occur to me that Vane might try to kill me. I kept my blades clean and though I didn’t wear them – I’d become accustomed to wearing very little – I kept them close at hand.

  Before I knew it he graduated from being a madman ranting at me from within the undergrowth to leaving traps for me.

  Until one day I decided I’d had enough. I had to kill Charles Vane.

  The morning that I set out to do it, it was with a heavy heart. I wondered whether it was better to have a madman as a companion than no companion at all. But he was a madman who hated me, and who probably wanted to kill me. It was either him or me.

  I found him in a water hole, sitting crouched with his hands between his legs, trying to make a fire and singing to himself, some nonsense song.

  His back was to me, offering me an easy kill, and I tried to tell myself I was being humane by putting him out of his misery, as I approached stealthily and activated my blade.

  But I couldn’t help myself. I hesitated, and in that moment he sprang his trap, flinging out one arm and tossing hot ashes into my face. As I reeled back he jumped to his feet, cutlass in hand, and the battle was on.

  Attack. Parry. Attack. I used my blade as a sword, meeting his steel and replying with my own.

  And I wondered: did he think of me as betraying him? Probably. His hatred gave him strength and for some moments he was no longer the pathetic troglodyte he had become, the fight returned to his eye. But it was not enough to turn the battle. The weeks spent crouching in the undergrowth and feeding off what he could steal had weakened him and I disarmed him easily. Instead of killing him then I sheathed my blade, unstrapped it and tossed it away, tearing off my shirt at the same time, and we fought with fists, stripped to the waist.

  Then when I had him down and pummelled him, I caught myself and stopped. I stood, breathing heavily, with blood dripping from my fists. Below me on the ground, Charles Vane. This unkempt, hermit-looking man – and of course I stank myself, but I wasn’t as bad as him. I could smell the shit I saw dried on his thighs as he half rolled on the ground and spat out a tooth on a thin string of saliva, chuckling to himself. Chuckling to himself like a madman.

  ‘You nancy boy,’ he said, ‘you’ve only done half the job.’

  I shook my head. ‘Is this my reward for believing the best about men? For thinking a bilge rat like you could muster up some sense once in a while? Maybe Hornigold was right. Maybe the world does need men of ambition, to stop the likes of you from messing it all up.’

  Charles laughed. ‘Or maybe you just don’t have the stones to live with no regrets.’

  I spat. ‘Don’t save me a spot in hell, shanker. I ain’t coming soon.’

 
And then I left him there, and when later I was able to help myself to a fisherman’s boat I wondered whether to go and fetch him, but decided against.

  God forgive me, but I’d had just about all I could take of Charles bloody Vane.

  48

  May, 1719

  I arrived home to Inagua after months away, thankful to be alive and glad to see my crew. Even more when I saw how pleased they were to see me. He is alive! The cap’n is alive! They celebrated for days, drank the bay dry, and it gladdened the heart to see.

  Mary was there too, but dressed as James Kidd, so I banished all thoughts of her bosoms, called her James when others were present, even Adewalé, who rarely left my side when I first returned, as though not wanting to let me out of his sight.

  Meanwhile Mary had news of my confederates: Stede Bonnet had been hanged at White Point.

  Poor old Stede. My merchant friend who evidently changed his mind where pirates were concerned – so much so he’d taken up the life himself. ‘The gentleman pirate’ they had called him. He’d worn a dressing gown and worked the routes further north for a while, before meeting Blackbeard on his travels. The pair had teamed up, but because Bonnet was as bad a pirate captain as he was a sailor, which is to say a very bad pirate captain, his crew had mutinied and joined Blackbeard. For Bonnet the final insult was that he had to remain as a ‘guest’ on Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Well, not the ‘final insult’ obviously. The final insult was being caught and hanged.

  Meanwhile on Nassau – poor, ailing Nassau – James Bonny was spying for Woodes Rogers, bringing more shame upon Anne than her roving eye ever had upon him, while Rogers had struck a mortal blow to the pirates. In a show of strength he’d ordered eight of them be hanged on Nassau harbour, and since then his opposition had crumbled. Even a plot to kill him had been half-hearted and easily overthrown.