I’d primed my pistols, and my blade was at the ready, and via Adewalé I’d told the crew that if there were any signs of a betrayal they were to fight to save themselves, don’t surrender to Roberts, no matter what. I’d seen how he treated those he considered his enemy. I’d seen how he treated his prisoners.
Now, though, he called me across, having his men on the rat-lines swing me a line so that first I, then Adewalé, could cross to his ship. I stood on the deck and faced him, a tension in the air, so thick you could almost taste it, because if Roberts did plan to betray us, then that was the time. My hand flexed at my blade mechanism.
Whatever Roberts was planning—and it was safe to say that he was planning something—it wasn’t for just then. At a word from him, two of his crewmates came forward with the chest we had liberated from the Portuguese flagship.
“Here’s my prize,” said Roberts, with his eyes on me. It was a coffer full of blood. That was what he had promised. Hardly the grand prize I was after. But we would see. We would see.
The two hands set down the chest and opened it. As the crew gathered I was reminded of the day I had fought Blaney on the deck of Edward Thatch’s galleon and they gathered round to watch us. They did the same now. They clambered on mast and in the rigging and stood on the gunwales in order to get a better look as their captain reached into the chest and picked out one of the vials and examined it in the light.
A murmur of disappointment ran around those watching. No gold for you, lads. No silver pieces of eight. Sorry. Just vials that probably to the untrained eye might have been wine but that I knew were blood.
Oblivious to his crew’s disappointment and no doubt uncaring of it anyway, Roberts was examining the vials, one by one.
“All the Templars have been busy, I see . . .” He replaced a vial with nimble fingers that danced over the glittering crystals as he picked out another one, held it up to the light and examined it. Around us the men, disconsolate with the turn of events, began descending the rat-lines, jumped down from the gunwales and began to go about their business.
Roberts squinted as he held up yet another crystal.
“Laurens Prins’s blood,” he said to me, then tossed it to me. “Useless now.”
I stared carefully at it as Roberts cycled quickly through the contents of the coffer, calling out names, “Woodes Rogers. Ben Hornigold. Even Torres himself. Small quantities, kept for a special purpose.”
Something to do with The Observatory. But what? The time for taunting me with promises was over. I felt anger beginning to rise. Most of his men had gone back to work, the quartermaster and first mate stood nearby, but I had Adewalé. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to show Bartholomew Roberts how serious I was. Maybe it was time to show him that I was sick and tired of being messed around with. Maybe it was time to use my blade to insist that he tell me what I wanted.
“You must take me to The Observatory, Roberts,” I said firmly. “I need to know what it is.”
Roberts twinkled. “To what end, hey? Will you sell it from under my nose? Or work with me and use it to bolster our gains?”
“Whatever improves my lot in life,” I said guardedly.
He closed the chest with a snap and placed both hands on the curved lid. “How ridiculous. A merry life and a short life, that’s my motto. It’s all the optimism I can muster.”
He seemed to consider. I held my breath, again, that thought, What now? Then he looked at me and the mischievous look in his eyes had departed, in its place a blank stare. “All right, Captain Kenway. You’ve earned a look.”
I smiled.
At last.
FIFTY-TWO
“Can you feel it, Adewalé,” I said to him, as we followed the Rover around the coast of Brazil. “We’re moments away from the grandest prize of all.”
“I feel nothing but hot wind in my ears, Captain,” he said enigmatically, face in the wind, sipping at the breeze.
I looked at him. Once again I felt almost overpowered with admiration for him. Here was a man who had probably saved my life on hundreds of occasions and definitely saved my life on at least three. Here was the most loyal, committed and talented quartermaster a captain could ever have; who had escaped slavery yet still had to deal with the jibes of common mutineers like Calico Jack, who thought themselves above him because of his colour. Here was a man who had overcome all the bilge life had thrown at him, and it was a lot of bilge, the kind that only a man sold as a slave will ever know. A man who stood by my side on the Jackdaw day after day and demanded no great prizes, no rich-making haul, demanded little but the respect he deserved, enough of the shares to live on, a place to rest his head, and a meal made by a cook without a nose.
How had I repaid this man?
By going on and on and on about The Observatory.
And still going on about it.
“Come on, man. When we take this treasure, we’ll be set for life. All of us. Ten times over.”
He nodded. “As you wish.”
By then the Jackdaw was not far from the Rover and I looked across the deck to see their captain, just as he looked over to see me.
“Ahoy, Roberts!” I called over. “We’ll cast anchor and meet ashore.”
“You were followed, Captain Kenway. How long for, I wonder?”
I snatched the spyglass from Adewalé and scuttled up the rat-lines, shouldering aside the lookout in the crow’s-nest and putting the spyglass to my eyes.
“What do you think that is, lad?” I snarled at the lookout.
He was young—as young as I was when I had first joined the crew of the Emperor. “It’s a ship, sir, but there are plenty of vessels in these waters, and I didn’t think it close enough to raise the alarm.”
I snapped the glass shut and glared at him. “You didn’t think at all, did you? That ship out there isn’t any other ship, son, it’s the Benjamin.”
The lad paled.
“Aye, that’s right, the Benjamin, captained by one Benjamin Hornigold. If they’ve not caught up with us then it’s because they haven’t wanted to catch up with us yet.”
I began to make my way down the rat-lines, pausing. While I’d looked at the Benjamin I’d seen the returning glint of a spyglass from the top of her mainmast.
“Call it then, lad,” I shouted up to the lookout. “Sound the alarm, late as it is.”
“Sail ho!”
The Cuban coast was to our starboard, the Benjamin behind us. But now I was at the tiller, and I hauled her over, the rudder complaining as she turned, the men reaching for a handhold as our masts swung, our port side dipped and we began to come around, until the manoeuvre was complete and the men were complaining and moaning as the oars were deployed, the sails reefed and we began a trudge aimed at meeting the Benjamin head-on. You won’t be expecting that, will you, Benjamin?
“Captain, think carefully about what you mean to do here,” said Adewalé.
“What are you griping about, Adewalé? It’s Ben Hornigold come to kill us out there.”
“Aye, and that traitor needs to die. But what then? Can you say with certainty that you deserve The Observatory more than he and his Templars?”
“No, I can’t and I don’t care to try. But if you’ve a better idea, by all means tell me.”
“Forget working with Roberts,” he said with a sudden surge of passion, something I’d rarely seen from him, such a cool head usually. “Tell the Assassins. Bring them here and let them protect The Observatory.”
“Aye, I’ll bring them here. If they’re willing to pay me a good sum for it, I will.”
He made a disgusted noise and walked away.
Ahead of us the Benjamin had turned—Hornigold with no stomach for a fight, it seemed—and we saw the men in her masts securing the sails. Oars appeared and were soon spanking the water, our two ships in a rowing race now. For long moments all I could hear was the shout of the coxswain, the creak of the ship, the splash of the sweepers in the water, as I stood at the bow of the Jackdaw
and Hornigold stood at the stern of the Benjamin, and we stared at one another.
As we raced, the sun dipped below the horizon, flickering orange the last of its light as night fell and brought with it a wind from the north-west that dragged fog inland. The Benjamin anticipated the wind with more success than we did. The first we knew of it was seeing her sails unfurl, and she put distance between herself and us.
Some fifteen minutes later, it was dark and fog billowed in towards that part of the Cuban coast-line they call the Devils Backbone, crags that look like the spine of a giant behemoth, a moon giving the mist a ghostly glow.
“We’ll have a hard fight if Hornigold draws us any deeper into this fog,” warned Ade.
That was Hornigold’s plan, though, but he’d made a mistake, and a big mistake for such an experienced sailor. But he found himself being hustled by the wind. It rushed in from the open sea, it charged at cross-purposes along the coast, turning the sand-banks of the Devil’s Backbone into a haze of impenetrable layers of fog and sand.
“The winds are tossing them about like a toy,” said Adewalé.
I pulled up the cowl of my robes against the chill wind that had just began to assault us as we came within its range.
“We can use that to get close.”
He looked at me. “If we are not dashed to pieces as well.”
Now the sails were rolled up again, but on the Benjamin they weren’t so quick. They were being buffeted by the wind. I saw men trying to reef the sails but finding it tough in the conditions. One fell, his scream carried to us by the gusts.
Now the Benjamin was in trouble. It bobbled on an increasingly choppy sea, buffeted by the wind that snatched at its sails, turning it first one way, then another. It veered close towards the banks of the Backbone. Men scurried about the decks. Another was blown overboard. They’d lost control. They were at the mercy of the elements.
I stood on the forecastle deck, one hand braced and the other held out, feeling the wind on my palm. I felt the pressure of the hidden blade on my forearm and knew it would taste the blood of Hornigold before the night was old.
“Can you do this, breddah? Is your heart up for it?”
Benjamin Hornigold, who had taught me so much about the way of the sea. Benjamin Hornigold, the man who had established Nassau, who had mentored my greatest friend Edward Thatch, who in turn had mentored me. Actually, I didn’t know if I could.
Truth be told, I was hoping the sea would swallow him up, and see the job done for me, I told him. “But I’ll do what I must.”
My quartermaster. God bless my quartermaster. He knew the fate of the Benjamin before the fates even knew of the fate of the Benjamin. As it crashed sidelong into a high bank-side, seemingly wrenched from the sea by a gust of wind and spirited into a cloud of sand and fog, he saw to it that we drew alongside.
We saw the shapes of crew members tumbling from her tops decks, figures indistinct in the murk. I stepped up to the gunwale of the forecastle deck, braced with one hand on the bow strip then used the Sense, just as James Kidd had shown me. Among those falling bodies of men who slipped from the deck of the ship onto the boggy sand-banks and into the water, I was able to make out the form of Benjamin Hornigold. Over my shoulder I said, “I’ll be coming back.”
And then I jumped.
FIFTY-THREE
The snap of muskets from the Jackdaw began behind me as a one-sided battle between my ship and the crew of the beached Benjamin began. My senses had returned to normal, but Hornigold was doing me a favour, shouting encouragement and curses to his men.
“Some mighty poor sailing back there, lads, and if we live out this day, by God, I’m flaying every last bitch of you. Hold your ground and be ready for anything.”
I appeared from the mist on the bank nearby, and rather than heed his own words he took to his heels, scrambling along to the top of the incline, then across it.
My men had started to use mortars on the fleeing crew of the Benjamin, though, and I found myself placed in danger as they began raining onto the sand around me. Until one exploded near Benjamin and the next thing I knew he was disappearing out of sight over the other side of the sand-bank in a spray of blood and sand.
I scrambled over the top, made hasty by my desire to see his fate, and paid for it with a sword swipe across my arm, opening a cut that bled. In a single movement I span, engaged the blades and met his next attack, our steel sparking as it met. The force of his attack was enough to send me tumbling down the bank and he came after me, launching himself from the slope with his cutlass swinging. I caught him on my boots and kicked him away, his sword point parting the air before my nose. Rolling, I pulled myself to my feet and scrambled after him, and again our blades met. For some moments we traded blows, and he was good, but he was hurt and I was the younger man, and I was lit by vengeful fire. And so I cut his arm, his elbow, his shoulder—until he could hardly stand or raise his sword and I finished him.
“You could have been a man who stood for something true,” he said as he died. His lips worked over the words carefully. His teeth were blood-stained. “But you’ve a killer’s heart now.”
“Well it’s a damn sight better than what you have, Ben,” I told him. “The heart of a traitor, who thinks himself better than his mates.”
“Aye, and proven true. What have you done since Nassau fell? Nothing but murder and mayhem.”
I lost my temper, rounded on him. “You threw in with the very kind we once hated!” I shouted.
“No,” he said. He reached to grab at me and make his point, but I angrily batted his hands away. “These Templars are different. I wish you could see that. But if you continue on your present course, you’ll find you’re the only one left walking it. With the gallows at the end.”
“That may be,” I said, “but now the world has one less snake in it and that’s enough for me.”
But he didn’t hear me. He was already dead.
FIFTY-FOUR
“Is the pirate hunter dead?” said Bartholomew Roberts.
I looked at him, Bartholomew Roberts, this unknowable character, a Sage, a carpenter who had turned to a life of piracy. Was this the first time he’d visited The Observatory? Why did he need me here? So many questions—questions to which I knew I would never be given answers.
We were at Long Bay, on the northern shores of Jamaica. He had been loading his pistols as I arrived. Then he asked his question, to which I replied, “Aye, by my own hand.”
He nodded and went back to cleaning his pistols. I looked at him and found a sudden rage gripped me. “Why is it you alone can find what so many want?”
He chuckled. “I was born with memories of this place. Memories of another time entirely, I think. Like . . . Like another life I have already led.”
I shook my head and wondered whether I would ever be free of this mumbo jumbo.
“Curse you for a lurch, man, and speak some sense.”
“Not today.”
Nor any other day, I thought angrily, but before I could find a reply there came a noise from the jungle.
Natives? Perhaps they had been disturbed by the battle between the Jackdaw and Benjamin that had ended. At the moment, what remained of Hornigold’s crew was being herded aboard the Jackdaw and I had left my men to it—deal with the prisoners and await my return shortly—and embarked on this meeting with Bartholomew Roberts alone.
He gestured to me. “After you, Captain. The path ahead is dangerous.”
With around a dozen of his men we began to move through the jungle, beating a path through the undergrowth as we began to head upwards. I wondered, should I be able to see it by now, this Observatory? Weren’t they great constructs, built on high peaks? All around us the hillsides waved greenery at us. Bushes and palm trees. Nothing made by man as far as the eye can see, unless you counted our ships in the bay.
We had been going only a few hundred yards when we heard a sound from the undergrowth. Something streaked from the bushes to one side o
f us and one of Roberts’s men fell with a glistening, gore-filled hole where the back of his head had been. I know a club strike when I see one. But whatever struck him was gone as quickly as it had come.
A tremor of fear ran through the crew, who drew their swords, pulled muskets from their backs and snatched pistols from their belts. Crouched. Ready.
“The men native to this land will put up a fight, Edward,” said Roberts quietly, eyes scanning the undergrowth, which was silent, keeping its secrets.
“You willing to push back as is necessary? To kill, if needed?”
I engaged my hidden blade.
“You’ll hear from me soon.”
And then I crouched, rolled sideways into the jungle and became a part of it.
FIFTY-FIVE
The natives knew their land well, but I was doing something they simply would not expect. I was taking the fight to them. The first man I came across was surprised to see me, and that surprise was his undoing. He wore nothing but a breech-clout, his black hair tied up on his head, a club still gleaming with the blood of a buccaneer upon it, and eyes wide with shock. The natives were only protecting what was theirs. It gave me no pleasure to slide my blade between his ribs and I hoped his end was quick, but I did it anyway, then moved on. The jungle began to resound with the noise of screams and gunshots, but I found more natives and dealt more death until at last the battle was over and I returned to the main party.
Eight had been killed in the battle. Most of the natives had fallen under my blade.
“The guardians of The Observatory,” Bartholomew Roberts told me.
“How long have their kind been here?” I asked him.
“Oh . . . at least a thousand years or more. Very dedicated men. Very deadly.”
I looked around at what remained of his group, his terrified men, who had watched their ship-mates picked off one by one. Then we continued our journey, climbing still, going up and up until we came upon it, grey-stone walls a dark contrast with the vibrant jungle colours, a massive building rising way, way above us.
Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Page 24