Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (9 page)

Dolzell and Trafford had pushed lit fuses between Captain Pritchard’s fingers in order to make him talk. There was a scattering of them on the boards as well as a jug of something that, when I put it to my nose, I thought was brine they’d used to pour on his wounds, to make them more painful.

His hands were blistered, charred black in some places, raw and bleeding in others, like tenderized meat.

I looked for a flask of water, still cautious of Blaney, wondering why he hadn’t moved. Why he hadn’t spoken.

He put me out of my misery.

“Well, well, well,” he rasped, “we find ourselves together.”

“Yes,” I replied drily. “Aren’t we lucky, mate?”

I saw a jug of water on the long table.

He ignored my sarcasm. “What would you be up to, exactly?”

“I’m fetching water to put on this man’s wounds.”

“Captain didn’t say nothing about tending to the prisoner’s wounds.”

“He’s in pain, man, can’t you see?”

“Don’t you talk to me like that, you little whelp,” snapped Blaney with a ferocity that chilled my blood. Still, I wasn’t going to show it. Full of bravado. Always tough on the outside.

“You sound like you’re fixing up for a fight, Blaney.”

I hoped I came across more confident than I felt.

“I maybe am at that.”

He had a brace of pistols in his belt and a cutlass at his waist, but the silver that seemed to appear in his hand, almost from nowhere, was a curved dagger.

I swallowed.

“What do you plan on doing, Blaney, with the ship about to mount a raid, and us in charge of guarding the captain here? Now, I don’t know what it is you have against me, what measure of grudge it is you’re nursing, but it’ll have to be settled another time, I’m afraid, unless you’ve got a better idea.”

When Blaney grinned a gold tooth flashed. “Oh, I’ve got other ideas, boy. An idea that maybe the captain here tried to escape and ran you through in the process. Or how about another idea altogether? An idea that it was
you
who helped the captain. That you untied the prisoner’s hands and tried to make good your escape, and it was me who stopped you, running you both through in the process. I think I like that idea even better. How’s about that?”

He was serious, I could tell. Blaney had been biding his time. No doubt he wanted to avoid the flogging he would have received for giving me a beating but suddenly he had me where he wanted me.

Then something happened that focused me. I’d knelt to see to the captain and something caught my eye. The thick signet ring he was wearing bore a symbol I recognized.

The day I’d woken up on the
Emperor
I’d found a looking-glass below decks and inspected my wounds. I had cuts, bruises and scrapes. I looked like what I was: a man who’d been beaten up. One of the marks was from where I’d been punched by the man in the hood. His ring had left its imprint on my skin. A symbol of a cross.

I saw that very same symbol there, on Captain Pritchard’s ring.

Despite the poor man’s discomfort I couldn’t help myself. “What’s this?”

My voice, a little too sharp and a little too loud, was enough to arouse the suspicions of Blaney, and he pushed himself off the closed cabin door and moved further into the room to see.

“What is what?” Pritchard was saying, but by now Blaney had reached us. He too had seen the ring, only his interest in it was less to do with its meaning, more to do with its value. Without hesitation, and heedless of Pritchard’s pain, he reached and yanked it off, flaying the finger of burnt and charred skin at the same time.

The captain’s screams took some time to die down, and when they had, his head lolled forward onto his chest and a long rope of saliva dripped to the cabin floor.

“Give me that back,” I said to Blaney.

“Why should I give it to you?”

“Now come on, Blaney . . .” I started. Then we heard something, a shout from outside, “Sail ho!”

It wasn’t as though our feud was forgotten, just placed to one side for a moment. Blaney pointed his dagger and said, “Wait there,” as he left the room to see what was going on.

The open door framed a scene of sudden panic outside but as the ship lurched it slammed shut. I looked from the door to Captain Pritchard, groaning in pain. I’d never wanted to be a pirate. I was a sheep-farmer from Bristol. A man in search of adventure, it’s true, but by fair means not foul. I wasn’t a criminal, an outlaw. I’d never wanted to be party to the torture of innocent men.

“Untie me,” said the captain, his voice dry and pained. “I can help you. I can guarantee you a pardon.”

“If you tell me about the ring.”

Captain Pritchard was moving his head slowly from side to side as though to shake away the pain. “The ring, what ring . . . ?” he was saying, confused, trying to work out why on earth this young deck-hand should be asking him about such an irrelevance.

“A mysterious man I consider my enemy wore a ring just like yours. I need to know its significance.”

He gathered himself. His voice was parched but measured. “Its significance is great power, my friend, great power that can be used to help you.”

“What if that great power was being used against me?”

“That can be arranged as well.”

“I feel it already has been used against me.”

“Set me free and I can use my influence to find out for you. Whatever wrong has been done to you, I can see it put right.”

“It involves the woman I love. Some powerful men.”

“There are powerful men and
powerful men
. I swear on the Bible, boy, that whatever ails you can be solved. Whatever wrong has been done to you can be put right.”

Already my fingers were fiddling with his knots but just as the ropes came away and slithered to the cabin floor, the door burst open. Standing in the doorway was Captain Dolzell. His eyes were wild. His sword was drawn. Behind him was a great commotion on the ship. Men who moments before had been ready to board the
Amazon Galley
, as organized a fighting unit as we could be, were suddenly in disarray.

Captain Dolzell said one word, but it was enough.

“Privateers.”

“Sir?” I said.

Thankfully, Dolzell was too preoccupied with developments to wonder what I was doing standing behind Captain Pritchard’s chair. “Privateers are coming,” he cried.

In terror I looked from Dolzell to where I’d just untied Captain Pritchard’s hands.

Pritchard revived. Though he had the presence of mind to keep his hands behind his back, he couldn’t resist taunting Dolzell, “It’s Edward Thatch, come to our rescue. You’d better run, Captain. Unlike you, Edward Thatch is a privateer loyal to the Crown, and when I tell him what has taken place here . . .”

In two long strides, Dolzell darted forward and thrust the point of his sword into Pritchard’s belly. Pritchard tautened in his seat, impaled on the blade. His head shot back and upside-down eyes fixed on mine for a second before his body went limp and he slumped in the chair.

“You’ll tell your friend nothing,” snarled Dolzell as he removed his blade.

Pritchard’s hands fell to hang limply by his sides.

“His hands are untied,” Dolzell’s accusing eyes went from Pritchard to me.

“Your blade, sir, it sliced the rope,” I said, which seemed to satisfy him. He turned and ran from the cabin. At the same time the
Emperor
shook—I later found out that Thatch’s ship had hit us side-on. There were some who said the captain had been rushing towards the fight and that the impact of the privateers’ ship had knocked him off the deck, over the gunwale and into the water. There are others who said that the captain, with images of Execution Dock in his mind, had plunged off the side in order to escape capture.

From the Navigation Room I took a cutlass and a pistol that I thrust into my belt, then dashed out of the cabin and onto the deck.

What I found was a ship at war. The privateers had boarded from the starboard, while on the port side the crew of the
Amazon Galley
had
taken their opportunity to fight back. We were hopelessly outnumbered and even as I ran into the fray with my sword swinging I could see that the battle was lost. Sluicing across the deck was what looked like a river of blood. Everywhere I could see lay men I had been serving with either dead or draped over the gunwales, their bodies lined with bleeding slashes. Others were fighting on. There was the roar of musket and pistol, the day torn apart by the constant ring of steel, the agonized screams of the dying, the warrior yells of the attacking buccaneers.

Even so, I found myself strangely on the outside of the battle. Cowardice has never been a problem with me, but I am not sure I exchanged more than two sword strokes with one of the enemy, before it seemed the battle was over. Many of our men were dead. The rest began to drop to their knees and let their swords fall to the deck, hoping, no doubt, for the clemency of our invaders. Some still fought on, including the first mate, Trafford, and by his side a man I didn’t know, Melling, I think his name was. As I watched, two of the attacking buccaneers came at Melling, at once swinging their swords with such force that no amount of fighting skills could stop them and he was driven back to the rail, slashes and cuts opening up in his face, then screaming as they both stabbed into him.

Blaney was there, I saw. Also, not far away, was the captain of the privateers’ ship, a man I would come to know as Edward Thatch, and who in years later the world would know as Blackbeard. He was just as the legend would know him though his beard was not so long back then: tall and thin, with thick, dark hair. He had been in the fray; his clothes were splattered with blood and it dripped from the blade of his sword. He and one of his men had advanced up the deck and I found myself standing with two of my ship-mates, Trafford and Blaney.

Blaney. It would have to be him.

The battle was over. I saw Blaney look from me to Trafford then to Thatch. A plan formed and in the next instance he’d called to Captain Thatch, “Sir, shall I finish them for you?” and swept his sword around to point at me and Trafford. For me he reserved an especially evil grin.

We both stared at him in absolute disbelief.
How could he do this?

“Why, you scurvy bilge-sucking bastard!” yelled Trafford, outraged at the treachery. He leapt towards Blaney, jabbing his cutlass more in hope than expectation, unless his expectation was to die, for that’s exactly what happened.

Blaney stepped easily to one side and at the same time whipped his sword in an underhand slash across Trafford’s chest. The first mate’s shirt split and blood drenched his front. He grunted in pain and surprise but that didn’t stop him launching a second yet, sadly for him, even wilder attack. Blaney punished him for it, slashing again with the cutlass, landing blow after blow, catching Trafford again and again across the face and chest, even after Trafford had dropped his own blade, fallen to his knees and, with a wretched whimper and blood bubbling at his lips, pitched forward to the deck and lay still.

The rest of the deck had fallen silent; each man left alive was looking over to where Blaney and I stood between the invaders and the entrance to the captain’s cabin. It felt as though we were the only men alive.

“Shall I finish him, sir?” said Blaney. Before I could react the point of his sword was at my throat. Again he grinned.

The crowd of men seemed to part around Edward Thatch as he stepped forward.

“Now”—he waved at Blaney with his cutlass, which still dripped with the blood of our crew—“why would you be calling me, ‘sir,’ lad?”

The point of Blaney’s sword tickled my throat. “I hope to join you, sir,” he replied, “and prove my loyalty to you.”

Thatch turned his attention to me. “And you, young ’un, what did you have in mind, besides dying at your ship-mate’s sword, that is? Would you like to join my crew as a privateer or die a pirate, either at the hands of your crewmate here, or back home in Blighty?”

“I never wanted to be a pirate, sir,” I said quickly. (Stop yer grinning.) “I merely wanted to earn some money for my wife, sir, honest money to take back to Bristol.”

(A Bristol from which I was banished and a wife I was prevented from seeing. But I decided not to bother Thatch with the little details.)

“Aye,” laughed Thatch, and threw out an arm to indicate the mass of captured men behind him, “and I suppose I could say this for every one of your crew left alive. Every man will swear he never intended a career in piracy. Ordered to do it by the captain, they’ll say. Forced into it against their will.”

“He ruled with a rod of iron, sir,” I said. “Any man who said as much would be telling you the truth.”

“How did your captain manage to persuade you to enter into this act of piracy, pray tell?” demanded Thatch.

“By telling us we would soon be pirates anyway, sir, when a treaty was signed.”

“Well he’s right most likely”—Thatch sighed thoughtfully—“no denying it. Still, that’s no excuse.” He grinned. “Not while I remain a privateer that is, sworn to protect and assist Her Majesty’s Navy, which includes watching over the likes of the
Amazon Galley
. Now—you’re not a swordsman, are you, boy?”

I shook my head no.

Thatch chuckled. “Aye, that is apparent. Didn’t stop you throwing yourself at this man here though, did it? Knowing that you would meet your end at the point of his sword. Why was that then?”

I bristled. “Blaney had turned traitor, sir, I saw red.”

Thatch jammed the point of his cutlass to the deck, rested both hands on the hilt and looked from me to Blaney, who had added wariness to his usual expression of angry incomprehension. I knew how he felt. It was impossible to say from Thatch’s demeanour where his sympathies lay. He simply looked from me to Blaney, then back again. From me to Blaney, then back again.

“I have an idea,” he roared at last, and every man on the deck seemed to relax at once. “Let’s settle this with a duel. What do you say, lads?”

Like a set of scales, the crew’s spirits rose as mine sank. I had barely used a blade. Blaney, on the other hand, was an experienced swordsman. Settling the matter would be the work of a heartbeat for him.

Thatch chuckled. “Ah, but not with swords, lads, because we’ve already seen how this one here has certain skills with the blade. No, I suggest a straight fight. No weapons, not even knives, does that suit you, boy?”

I nodded yes, thinking what would suit me most was no fight at all, but a straight fight was the best I could hope for.

“Good.” Thatch clapped his hands and his sword shuddered in the wood. “Then let us begin. Come on, lads, form a ring, let these two gentlemen get to it.”

The year was 1713, and I was about to die, I was sure of it.

Thinking about it—that was nine years ago, wasn’t it? It would have been the year you were born.