Assassin's Creed: Black Flag

by Oliver Bowden

  I was one of the lucky ones, whose wounds were not enough to attract their attention, and I swam for shore. At one point I was knocked by a shark gliding past, thankfully too concerned with joining the feeding frenzy to stop. My foot seemed to snag what felt like a fin in the water and I prayed that whatever blood I was leaking was not enough to tempt the shark away from the more plentiful chum elsewhere. It was a cruel irony that those more heavily wounded were the ones who were attacked first.

  I say “attacked.” You know what I mean. They were eaten. Devoured. How many survivors there were from the battle, I have no way of knowing. All I can say is that I saw most survivors end up as food for the sharks. Me, I swam to the safety of the beach at Cape Buena Vista, where I collapsed with sheer relief and exhaustion, and if the dry land wasn’t made up entirely of sand, I probably would have kissed it.

  My hat was gone. My beloved three-pointer that had sat upon my head as man and boy. What I didn’t know at the time, of course, was that it was the first step in my shedding the past, saying good-bye to my old life. What’s more, I still had my cutlass, and given the choice between losing my hat and cutlass . . .

  So, after some time thanking my lucky stars and hearing faint screams in the distance, I rolled onto my back, then heard something from my left.

  It was a groan. Looking over I saw that its owner was the robed assassin. He’d come to rest just a short distance away from me and he was lucky, very lucky not to be eaten by the sharks, because when he rolled over to his back he left behind a patch of crimson-stained sand. As he lay on his back with his chest rising and falling, his breath coming in short, jagged gasps, his hands went to his stomach. His obviously wounded stomach.

  “Was it good for you as well?” I asked, laughing. Something about the situation struck me as funny. Even after these few years at sea, there was still something of the Bristol brawler about me, who couldn’t help but make light of the situation, no matter how dark it seemed. He ignored me. Or ignored the quip at least.

  “Havana,” he groaned. “I must get to Havana.”

  That produced another smile from me. “Well, I’ll just build us another ship, will I?”

  “I can pay you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Isn’t that the sound you pirates like best? A thousand reales.”

  That had aroused my interest. “Keep talking.”

  “Will you, or won’t you?” he demanded to know.

  One of us was badly wounded, and it wasn’t me. I stood to look him over, seeing the robes, in which, presumably, was hidden his blade. I liked the look of that hidden blade. I had the feeling that the man in possession of that particular blade might go far, especially in my chosen trade. Let’s not forget that before my ship’s magazine had exploded, this very man was about to use that very blade on me. You may think me callous. You may think me cruel and ruthless. But please understand, in such situations a man must do what is necessary to survive, and a good lesson to learn if you’re standing on the deck of a burning ship about to move in for the kill: finish the job.

  Lesson two: if you don’t manage to finish the job, it’s probably best not to expect help from your intended target.

  And lesson three: if you ask your intended target for help anyway, it’s probably best not to start getting angry with him.

  For all those reasons I ask you not to judge me. I ask you to understand why I gazed down at him so dispassionately.

  “You don’t have that gold on you now, do you?”

  He looked back at me, and his eyes blazed briefly. Then, in a second, more quickly than I could possibly have anticipated—imagined, even—he’d drawn a pocket pistol and shoved the barrel into my stomach. The shock more than the impact of the gun-barrel sent me staggering back, only to fall on my behind some feet away. With one hand clutching at his wound, the other with the pistol trained on me, he pulled himself to his feet.

  “Bloody pirates,” he snarled through clenched teeth.

  I saw his finger whiten on the trigger. I heard the hammer on the pistol snap forward and closed my eyes expecting the shot to come.

  But it never did. Of course it didn’t. There was indeed something unearthly about this man—his grace, his speed, his garb, his choice of weaponry—but he was still just a man, and no man can command the sea. Even this man couldn’t prevent his powder getting wet.

  Lesson four: if you’re going to ignore lessons one, two and three, it’s probably best not to pull out a gun filled with wet powder.

  His advantage lost, the killer turned and headed straight for the tree line, one arm still clutching his wounded stomach and the other warding off undergrowth as he crashed into it and out of sight. For a second I simply sat there, unable to believe my luck: if I were a cat, then I’d have used up at least three of my nine lives, just on that day.

  Without a second thought—well, maybe perhaps a single second thought, because, after all, I’d seen him in action and, wound or no wound, he was dangerous—I took off in pursuit. He had something I wanted. That hidden blade.

  I heard him crashing through the jungle ahead of me and so, heedless of the branches whipping my face and dancing over roots underfoot, I gave chase. I reached to prevent myself being slapped in the face by a thick green leaf the size of a banjo and saw a bloody handprint on it. Good. I was on the right track. From further ahead came the sound of disturbed birds crashing through the canopy of trees above. I hardly needed to worry about losing him: the whole jungle shook to the sound of his clumsy progress. His grace, it seemed, was no more, lost in the blundering fight for survival.

  “Follow me, and I’ll kill you,” I heard from ahead of me.

  I doubted that. As far as I could see, his killing days were over.

  So it proved. I reached a clearing where he stood, half bent over with the pain of his stomach wound. He’d been trying to decide which route to take but at the sound of me crashing out of the undergrowth, turned to face me. A slow, painful turn, like an old man crippled with belly-ache.

  Something of his old pride returned, and a little fight crept into his eyes as there was a sliding noise, and from his right sleeve sprouted the blade, which gleamed in the dusk of the clearing.

  It struck me that the blade must have inspired fear in his enemies, and that to inspire fear in your enemy was half the battle won. Make someone frightened of you, that was the key. Unfortunately, just as his killing days were over, so too was his ability to inspire dread in his foes. His robes, hood and even the blade. With him exhausted and hunched over with pain, they looked like the trinkets they were. I took no pleasure in killing him, and possibly he didn’t even deserve to die. Our captain had been a cruel, ruthless man, fond of a flogging. So fond, in fact, that he was apt to administer them himself. He’d enjoyed doing what he called “making a man a governor of his own island,” which, in other words, was marooning him. Nobody but his own mother was going to mourn our captain’s passing. To all intents and purposes, the man with the robes had done us a favour.

  But the man with the robes had been about to kill me as well. The first lesson was that if you set out to kill someone, you’d better finish the job.

  He knew that, I’m sure, as he died.

  Afterwards I rifled through his things, and yes, the body was still warm. And no, I’m not proud of it, but please don’t forget, I was—I am—a pirate. So I rifled through his things. From inside his robes I retrieved a satchel.

  Hmm, I thought. Hidden treasure.

  But when I upended it onto the ground so the sun could dry the contents, what I saw was . . . well, not treasure. There was an odd cube made of crystal, with an opening on one side, an ornament, perhaps? (Later I’d find out what it was, of course, when I’d laugh at myself for ever thinking it a mere ornament.) Some maps I laid to one side, as well as a letter with a broken seal that, as I began reading, I realized held the key to everything I wanted from this mysterious killer . . .

  Señor Duncan Walpole,

  I accept your most gene
rous offer and await your arrival with eagerness.

  If you truly possess the information we desire, we have the means to reward you handsomely.

  Though I do not know your face by sight, I believe I can recognize the costume made infamous by your secret Order.

  Therefore, come to Havana in haste and trust that you shall be welcomed as a Brother. It will be a great honour to meet you at last, Señor; to put a face to your name and shake your hand as I call you friend. Your support for our secret and most noble cause is warming.

  Your most humble servant,

  Governor Laureano Torres y Ayala

  I read the letter twice. Then a third time for good measure.

  Governor Torres, of Havana, eh? I thought.

  “Reward you handsomely,” eh?

  A plan had begun to form.

  I buried Señor Duncan Walpole. I owed him that much at least. He went out of this world the way he’d arrived—naked—because I needed his clothes in order to begin my deception and, though I do say so myself, I looked good in his robes. They were a perfect fit and I looked the part.

  Acting the part, though, would be another matter entirely. The man I was impersonating? Well, I’ve already told you of the aura that seemed to surround him. When I secured his hidden blade to my own forearm and tried to eject it as he had, well—it just wasn’t happening. I cast my mind back to seeing him do it and tried to impersonate him. A flick of the wrist. Something special, obviously, to stop the blade’s engaging by accident. I flicked my wrist. I twisted my arm. I wriggled my fingers. All to no avail. The blade sat stubbornly in its housing. It looked both beautiful and fearsome but if it wouldn’t engage, it was no good to man or beast.

  What was I to do? Carry it around and keep trying? Hope I’d eventually chance upon its secret? Somehow I thought not. I had the feeling there was arcane knowledge attached to this blade. Found upon me, it could betray me.

  With a heavy heart I cast it away, then addressed the grave-side I had prepared for my victim.

  “Mr. Walpole . . .” I said, “let’s collect your reward.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I came upon them at Cape Buena Vista beach the next morning: a schooner anchored in the harbour, boats brought ashore and crates off-loaded and dragged onto the beach where they’d been stacked, either by the dejected-looking men who sat on the sand with their hands bound, or perhaps by the bored English soldiers who stood guard over them. As I arrived, a third boat was docking, more soldiers disembarking and casting their eyes over the prisoners.

  Why the men were tied up, I wasn’t sure. They certainly didn’t appear to be pirates. Merchants by the looks of them. Either way, as another rowing-boat approached I was about to find out.

  “The commodore’s gone ahead to Kingston,” called one of the soldiers. In common with the others he wore a tricorn and waistcoat and carried a musket. “We are to commandeer this lubber’s ship and follow.”

  So that was it. The English wanted their ship. They were as bad as pirates themselves.

  Merchants like to eat almost as much as they like to drink. Thus they tend towards the stout side. One of the captives, however, was even more florid-faced and plump than his companions. This was the “lubber” the English were talking about, the man I came to know as Stede Bonnet, and at the sound of the word “Kingston,” he’d seemed to perk up, and he raised his head, which before had been contemplating the sand with the look of a man wondering how he’d got into this position and how he was going to get out.

  “No, no,” he was saying, “our destination is Havana. I’m just a merchant . . .”

  “Quiet, you bloody pirate!” An irate soldier responded by toeing sand into the wretched man’s face.

  “Sir”—he cringed—“my crew and I have merely anchored to water and resupply.”

  Then, for some reason known only to them, Stede Bonnet’s companions chose that moment to make their escape. Or try to make their escape. Hands still tied, they scrambled to their feet and began a lurching run towards the tree line where I hid, watching the scene. At the same time the soldiers, seeing their escape, raised their muskets.

  Shot began zinging into the trees around me and I saw one of the merchants fall in a spray of blood and brain matter. Another went down heavily with a scream. Meanwhile, one of the soldiers had placed the muzzle of his rifle at Bonnet’s head.

  “Give me one reason I shouldn’t vent your skull,” he snarled.

  Poor old Bonnet, accused of being a pirate, about to lose his ship, and seconds away from a steel ball in the brain. He did the only thing a man in his position could do. He stammered. He spluttered. Possibly even wet himself.

  “Um . . . um . . .”

  I drew my cutlass and emerged from the tree line with the sun behind me. The soldier gaped. What I must have looked like as I stepped out of the glare of the sunshine with my robes flowing and cutlass swinging I don’t know, but it was enough to give the rifleman pause a second. A second that cost him his life.

  I slashed upwards, opening his waistcoat and spilling his guts to the sand, spinning around in the same movement and dragging my blade across the throat of a soldier who stood nearby. Two men dead in the blink of an eye and a third about to join them as I ran him through with my cutlass. And he slid from my blade and died, writhing on the beach. I snatched my dagger from my belt with my other hand, jammed it into the eye of a fourth, and he fell back with a shocked yell, blood gushing from the hilt embedded in his face, staining the teeth of his screaming mouth.

  The soldiers had all loosed their shot at the escaping merchants, and though they weren’t slow to reload, were still no match for a swordsman. That’s the thing with soldiers of the Crown. They rely too much on their muskets, great for frightening native women, not so effective at close quarters with a scrapper who learnt his trade in the taverns of Bristol.

  The next man was still bringing his musket to bear when I dispatched him with two decisive strokes. The last of the soldiers was the first to get a second shot off. I heard it part the air by my nose and reacted with shock, hacking at his arm wildly until his musket dropped and he fell to his knees, pleading for his life with a raised hand until I silenced him with the point of my cutlass into his throat. He dropped with a gurgle, his blood flooded the sand around him, and I stood over his body with my shoulders heaving as I caught my breath, hot in my robes but knowing I had handled myself well. When Bonnet thanked me, saying, “By God’s grace, sir, you saved me. A profusion of thanks!” it wasn’t Edward Kenway the farm-boy from Bristol he was thanking. I had started again. I had become Duncan Walpole.

  • • •

  Stede Bonnet, it turned out, had not only lost his crew but had no skill for sailing. I had saved his ship from being commandeered by the English but to all intents and purposes I commandeered it myself. We had one thing in common, at least, as we were both heading for Havana. His ship was fast and he was talkative but good company, so we sailed together in what was a mutually beneficial partnership—for the time being at least.

  As I steered I asked him about himself. What I found was a rich but fretful man, evidently attracted to more, shall we say, questionable ways of making even more money. For one thing, he constantly asked about pirates.

  “Most hunt the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola,” I told him, suppressing a smile as I steered his schooner.

  He added, “I shouldn’t worry about being waylaid by pirates, truth be told. My ship is small and I have nothing of immense value. Sugar-cane and its yields. Molasses, rum, that sort of thing.”

  I laughed, thinking of my own crew. “There’s not a pirate living who’d turn his back on a keg of rum.”

  Havana was a low port surrounded by green forest and tall palm trees, their fronds a lush green that wafted gently in the breeze, waving us in as our schooner sailed into port. In the busy town, white-stone buildings with red-slate roofs looked dilapidated and weather-beaten, bleached by the sun and blasted by the wind.

/>   We moored and Bonnet set about his business helping to maintain amicable links with our former enemies the Spanish. He did it using that venerable diplomacy technique—selling them things.

  He seemed to know the city, so rather than strike out alone I waited for his diplomacy mission to end, then agreed to accompany him to an inn. As we made our way there it occurred to me—the old me, the Edward Kenway–me—would have been looking forward to reaching the tavern. He’d have been getting thirsty.

  But I had no urge to drink—and I mulled that over as we made our way through Havana, weaving through townsfolk who hurried along the sun-drenched streets, and watched by suspicious old folk who squinted at us from doorways. All I’d done was assume a different name and clothes, but it was as though I had been given a second chance at becoming . . . well . . . a man. As if Edward Kenway was a rehearsal from which I could learn my mistakes. Duncan Walpole would be the man I always wanted to be.

  We reached the inn. The taverns of Edward’s past had been dark places with low ceilings and shadows that leapt and danced on the walls, where men hunched over tankards and spoke from the sides of their mouths. Here beneath the Cuban sun twinkled an outdoor tavern crowded with sailors who were leathery-faced and sinewy from months at sea, as well as portly merchants—friends of Bonnet, of course—and locals: men and children with handfuls of fruit for sale, women trying to sell themselves.

  A dirty, drunken deck-hand gave me the evil eye as I took a seat while Bonnet disappeared to meet this contact. Perhaps this sailor didn’t like the look of me—after the Blaney business I was used to that kind of thing—or maybe he was a righteous man and didn’t approve of the fact that I swiped the ale of a sleeping drunk.

  “Can I help you, friend?” I said over the lip of my beaker.

  The jack-tar made a smacking sound with his mouth. “Fancy meeting a Taffy deep in Dago country,” he slurred. “I’m English meself, biding me time till the next war calls me to service.”