The High Seas, March, 1716
May. 4th, 2021 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doesnotkneelThey set course south-east or thereabouts. Thatch said he’d seen this particular galleon lurking around the lower reaches of the Bahamas. They took the Jackdaw, and as they sailed they found themselves talking to James Kidd and quizzing him on his parentage.
“The bastard son of the late William Kidd, eh?” Ed Thatch was most amused to relate. “Is that a true yarn you like spinning?”
The three of them stood on the poop-deck and shared a spyglass like it was a black-jack of rum, trading it in order to peer through a wall of early-evening fog so thick it was like trying to stare through milk.
“So my mother told me,” replied Kidd primly. I’m the result of a night of passion just before William left London . . .”
It was difficult to tell from his voice if he was vexed by the question. He was different like that. Edward Thatch, for example, wore his heart on his sleeve.
He’d be angry one second, hearty the next. Didn’t matter whether he was throwing punches or doling out drunken, rib-crushing bear-hugs, you knew what you were getting with Thatch.
Kidd was different. Whatever cards he was holding, he kept them close to his chest. Edward remembered a conversation they’d had a while back. “Did you steal that costume from a dandy in Havana?” he’d asked.
“No, sir,” Edward replied. “Found this on a corpse... one that was walking about and talking shite to my face only moments before.”
“Ah . . .” he’d said, and a look had crossed his face, impossible to decipher...
Still, there was no hiding Kidd's enthusiasm when they finally saw the galleon they were looking for.
“That ship’s a monster, look at the size of her,” said Kidd as Thatch preened himself as though to say, I told you so.
“Aye,” he warned, “and we cannot last long face-to-face with her. You hear that, Kenway? Keep your distance, and we’ll strike when fortune favours us.”
“Under cover of darkness, most likely,” Edward said with his eye to the spyglass.
Thatch was right. She was a beauty. A fine ornament for their harbour indeed, and an imposing line of defence in its own right.
They let the galleon draw away towards a disruption of horizon in the distance that Edward took to be an island. Inagua Island, if their memory of the charts was correct, where a cove provided the perfect place for their vessels to moor, and the abundant plant and animal life made it ideal for re-stocking supplies.
Thatch confirmed it. “I know the place. A natural stronghold used by a French captain named DuCasse.”
“Julien DuCasse?” Edward said, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. “The Templar?”
“Name’s right,” replied Thatch, distracted. “I didn’t know he had a title.”
Grimly Edward said, “I know the man and if he sees my ship, he’ll know it from his time in Havana. Meaning he may wonder who’s sailing her now. I can’t risk that.”
“I don’t want to lose that galleon,” said Thatch. “Let’s think on it and maybe wait till it’s darker before hopping aboard.”
---
Later, Ed took the opportunity to address the men, climbing the rigging and gazing down upon them gathered on the main deck, Edward Thatch and James Kidd among them. Edward wondered, as he hung there for a moment, waiting for silence to fall, whether Thatch looked at and felt proud of his young protégé, a man he had mentored in the ways of piracy. He hoped so.
“Gentlemen! As is custom among our kind, we do not plunge headlong into folly on the orders of a single madman, but act according to our own collective madness!”
They roared with laughter.
“The object of our attention is a square-rigged galleon, and we want her for the advantage she’ll bring Nassau. So I’ll put it to the vote... All those in favour of storming this cove and taking the ship, stomp and shout Aye!” The men roared their approval, not a single voice of dissent among them and it gladdened the heart to hear it.
“And those who oppose, whimper Nay!”
There was not a nay to be heard.
“Never was the King’s Council this unified!” Edward roared and men cheered. He looked down at James Kidd, and especially at Thatch, and they beamed their approval.
Shortly after, as they sailed into the cove, he had a thought: he needed to be sure that Julien DuCasse was taken care of. If DuCasse saw the Jackdaw, and more to the point, if he saw Edward and escaped, he could tell his Templar confederates where Ed was, and he didn’t want that. Not if he still held out hope of locating The Observatory, which, despite what his pals were saying, he still did. He gave the matter some thought, mulling over the various possibilities, and in the end decided to do what had to be done: he jumped overboard.
Well, not straight away. First Edward told Thatch and James of gis plans and then, when his friends had been warned, he jumped overboard.
Edward swam to shore, where he moved like a wraith in the night, thinking of Duncan Walpole as he did it, mind going back to the evening he’d broken into Torres’s mansion and dearly hoping that tonight didn’t turn out the same way.
He passed clusters of DuCasse’s guards, his limited Spanish picking up snippets of conversation as they moaned about having to hunt down supplies for the boat. Night was falling by the time Edward came to an encampment and crouched in the undergrowth, where he listened to conversation from within the canvas of a lean-to. One voice in particular he recognized: Julien DuCasse.
He already knew that DuCasse kept a manor house on the island, where he no doubt liked to relax after returning from his expeditions out to control the world.
The fact that DuCasse wasn’t returning there at that time meant that this was but a fleeting visit to collect supplies.
Now, just one problem. Inside the lean-to his former Templar associate was surrounded by guards. They were truculent guards, who were hacked off at having to collect stocks for the ship, not to mention feeling the sharp edge of Julien DuCasse’s tongue. But they were guards all the same. Edward looked around at the encampment. On the opposite side was a fire, which had burned down almost to the embers. Close to him were crates and barrels, and looking from them to the fire he could see that they had been placed there deliberately. Sure enough, when Edward crabbed over and had a better look, what he saw were kegs of gunpowder. He reached behind my neck, where he’d stowed his pistol to keep it dry. His powder was wet, of course, but then access to powder was no longer a problem.
In the middle of the encampment stood three soldiers. On guard, supposedly, but in actual fact mumbling something Edward couldn’t hear. Cursing DuCasse, probably. Other troops were coming and going and adding to the pile of supplies: firewood, mainly, kindling, as well as water casks that slopped with water drawn from a spring nearby. Not exactly the feast of wild boar DuCasse was hoping for.
Staying in the shadows, and with one eye on the movement of the troops, he crept close to the kegs and gouged a hole in the bottom one, big enough to fill his hands and create a little trail of gunpowder. His line of gunpowder led in a half circle from where he crouched back to the kegs of gunpowder. At the other side of that circle was the lean-to where Julien DuCasse sat, drinking and dreaming of grand Templar plans to take over the world — and shouting abuse at his recalcitrant men.
Right. He had fire. He had a trail of gunpowder leading from the fire through the undergrowth and to the kegs. He had men waiting to be blown up and he had Julien DuCasse awaiting their moment of reckoning.
Now all Edward needed to do was time things so that none of the boorish troops would see his makeshift fuse before it could detonate the powder.
Crouching, he moved to the fire, then flicked a glowing ember onto the tail of the gunpowder fuse. He steeled himself at the sound it made — it seemed so loud in the night — and thanked God the soldiers were making so much noise. As the fuse fizzed away from him, Ed hoped he hadn’t inadvertently broken the line of the fuse; hoped he hadn’t accidentally trickled the gunpowder into anything wet; hoped none of the soldiers would arrive back just at the very instant that...
Then, one did. He carried a bowlful of something. Fruit, perhaps. But either the smell or the noise alerted him and he stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked down at his boots just as the sizzle-burn of the gunpowder trail ran past his feet.
He looked up and his mouth formed an O to shout for help as Edward snatched a dagger out of his belt, pulled his arm back and threw it. Thank God for those wasted afternoons defacing trees back home at Bristol. Thank God, as the knife hit him somewhere just above the collar-bone — not an especially accurate shot, but it did the job — so that instead of shouting the alarm he made a muted, strangulated sound and slumped forward to his knees with his hands scrabbling at his neck.
The men in the clearing heard the noise of his body falling, his bowl tumbling, the fruit rolling, and turned to see its source. All of a sudden they were alert but it didn’t matter because even as they pulled their muskets from their shoulders, and a shout went up, they had no idea what hit them.
Edward had turned his back, put his hands over his ears and curled up into a ball as the explosion tore across the clearing. Something hit his back. Something soft and wet, that he didn’t particularly want to think about. From further away Edward heard shouts and knew there would be more men arriving at any moment, so he turned and ran into the clearing, past blown-up bodies of soldiers in various states of mutilation and dismemberment, most of them dead, one of them pleading for death, and through thick black smoke that filled the clearing, embers floating in the air.
DuCasse emerged from the tent, swearing in French, shouting for someone, anyone, to put out the fire. Coughing, spluttering, he waved his hand in front of his face to clear smoke and choking particles of flaming soot and peered into the fog.
And he saw Edward standing in front of him.
Edward knew that DuCasse recognized him because “you” was the only word he said before Ed drove his blade into him.
The blade hadn’t made a sound.
“You remember the gift you gave me?” The blade made a slight sucking noise as he pulled it from DuCasse's chest. “Well, it answers just fine.”
“You son of a whore,” DuCasse coughed, and blood speckled his face. Around them rained the flaming soot like satanic snow. “As bold as a musket ball, and still half as sharp,” he managed as the life drained from him.
“I’m sorry about this, mate. But I can’t risk your telling your Templar friends about me still kicking around.”
“I pity you, buccaneer. After all you have seen, after all we showed you of our Order, still you embrace the life of an ignorant and aimless rogue.” Around his neck Edward saw something he hadn’t seen before. A key on a chain. He yanked it and it came away easily in his fingers.
“Is petty larceny the extent of your ambition,” he mocked. “Have you no mind to comprehend the scope of ours? All the empires on earth, abolished! A free and opened world, without parasites like you.”
He closed his eyes, dying. His last words were, “May the hell you find be of your own making.”
Edward heard men come into the clearing behind him and knew it was time to leave.
In the distance Edward could hear more shouts and the sounds of battle and knew that his ship-mates had arrived and that the cove and galleon would soon be ours and the night’s work over. As he disappeared into the undergrowth he thought about DuCasse’s final words: May the hell you find be of your own making.
We would see about that, Edward thought. We would see.
[[ taken from the Assassin's Creed: Black Flag novelization. some gore under the cut. ]]
“The bastard son of the late William Kidd, eh?” Ed Thatch was most amused to relate. “Is that a true yarn you like spinning?”
The three of them stood on the poop-deck and shared a spyglass like it was a black-jack of rum, trading it in order to peer through a wall of early-evening fog so thick it was like trying to stare through milk.
“So my mother told me,” replied Kidd primly. I’m the result of a night of passion just before William left London . . .”
It was difficult to tell from his voice if he was vexed by the question. He was different like that. Edward Thatch, for example, wore his heart on his sleeve.
He’d be angry one second, hearty the next. Didn’t matter whether he was throwing punches or doling out drunken, rib-crushing bear-hugs, you knew what you were getting with Thatch.
Kidd was different. Whatever cards he was holding, he kept them close to his chest. Edward remembered a conversation they’d had a while back. “Did you steal that costume from a dandy in Havana?” he’d asked.
“No, sir,” Edward replied. “Found this on a corpse... one that was walking about and talking shite to my face only moments before.”
“Ah . . .” he’d said, and a look had crossed his face, impossible to decipher...
Still, there was no hiding Kidd's enthusiasm when they finally saw the galleon they were looking for.
“That ship’s a monster, look at the size of her,” said Kidd as Thatch preened himself as though to say, I told you so.
“Aye,” he warned, “and we cannot last long face-to-face with her. You hear that, Kenway? Keep your distance, and we’ll strike when fortune favours us.”
“Under cover of darkness, most likely,” Edward said with his eye to the spyglass.
Thatch was right. She was a beauty. A fine ornament for their harbour indeed, and an imposing line of defence in its own right.
They let the galleon draw away towards a disruption of horizon in the distance that Edward took to be an island. Inagua Island, if their memory of the charts was correct, where a cove provided the perfect place for their vessels to moor, and the abundant plant and animal life made it ideal for re-stocking supplies.
Thatch confirmed it. “I know the place. A natural stronghold used by a French captain named DuCasse.”
“Julien DuCasse?” Edward said, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. “The Templar?”
“Name’s right,” replied Thatch, distracted. “I didn’t know he had a title.”
Grimly Edward said, “I know the man and if he sees my ship, he’ll know it from his time in Havana. Meaning he may wonder who’s sailing her now. I can’t risk that.”
“I don’t want to lose that galleon,” said Thatch. “Let’s think on it and maybe wait till it’s darker before hopping aboard.”
---
Later, Ed took the opportunity to address the men, climbing the rigging and gazing down upon them gathered on the main deck, Edward Thatch and James Kidd among them. Edward wondered, as he hung there for a moment, waiting for silence to fall, whether Thatch looked at and felt proud of his young protégé, a man he had mentored in the ways of piracy. He hoped so.
“Gentlemen! As is custom among our kind, we do not plunge headlong into folly on the orders of a single madman, but act according to our own collective madness!”
They roared with laughter.
“The object of our attention is a square-rigged galleon, and we want her for the advantage she’ll bring Nassau. So I’ll put it to the vote... All those in favour of storming this cove and taking the ship, stomp and shout Aye!” The men roared their approval, not a single voice of dissent among them and it gladdened the heart to hear it.
“And those who oppose, whimper Nay!”
There was not a nay to be heard.
“Never was the King’s Council this unified!” Edward roared and men cheered. He looked down at James Kidd, and especially at Thatch, and they beamed their approval.
Shortly after, as they sailed into the cove, he had a thought: he needed to be sure that Julien DuCasse was taken care of. If DuCasse saw the Jackdaw, and more to the point, if he saw Edward and escaped, he could tell his Templar confederates where Ed was, and he didn’t want that. Not if he still held out hope of locating The Observatory, which, despite what his pals were saying, he still did. He gave the matter some thought, mulling over the various possibilities, and in the end decided to do what had to be done: he jumped overboard.
Well, not straight away. First Edward told Thatch and James of gis plans and then, when his friends had been warned, he jumped overboard.
Edward swam to shore, where he moved like a wraith in the night, thinking of Duncan Walpole as he did it, mind going back to the evening he’d broken into Torres’s mansion and dearly hoping that tonight didn’t turn out the same way.
He passed clusters of DuCasse’s guards, his limited Spanish picking up snippets of conversation as they moaned about having to hunt down supplies for the boat. Night was falling by the time Edward came to an encampment and crouched in the undergrowth, where he listened to conversation from within the canvas of a lean-to. One voice in particular he recognized: Julien DuCasse.
He already knew that DuCasse kept a manor house on the island, where he no doubt liked to relax after returning from his expeditions out to control the world.
The fact that DuCasse wasn’t returning there at that time meant that this was but a fleeting visit to collect supplies.
Now, just one problem. Inside the lean-to his former Templar associate was surrounded by guards. They were truculent guards, who were hacked off at having to collect stocks for the ship, not to mention feeling the sharp edge of Julien DuCasse’s tongue. But they were guards all the same. Edward looked around at the encampment. On the opposite side was a fire, which had burned down almost to the embers. Close to him were crates and barrels, and looking from them to the fire he could see that they had been placed there deliberately. Sure enough, when Edward crabbed over and had a better look, what he saw were kegs of gunpowder. He reached behind my neck, where he’d stowed his pistol to keep it dry. His powder was wet, of course, but then access to powder was no longer a problem.
In the middle of the encampment stood three soldiers. On guard, supposedly, but in actual fact mumbling something Edward couldn’t hear. Cursing DuCasse, probably. Other troops were coming and going and adding to the pile of supplies: firewood, mainly, kindling, as well as water casks that slopped with water drawn from a spring nearby. Not exactly the feast of wild boar DuCasse was hoping for.
Staying in the shadows, and with one eye on the movement of the troops, he crept close to the kegs and gouged a hole in the bottom one, big enough to fill his hands and create a little trail of gunpowder. His line of gunpowder led in a half circle from where he crouched back to the kegs of gunpowder. At the other side of that circle was the lean-to where Julien DuCasse sat, drinking and dreaming of grand Templar plans to take over the world — and shouting abuse at his recalcitrant men.
Right. He had fire. He had a trail of gunpowder leading from the fire through the undergrowth and to the kegs. He had men waiting to be blown up and he had Julien DuCasse awaiting their moment of reckoning.
Now all Edward needed to do was time things so that none of the boorish troops would see his makeshift fuse before it could detonate the powder.
Crouching, he moved to the fire, then flicked a glowing ember onto the tail of the gunpowder fuse. He steeled himself at the sound it made — it seemed so loud in the night — and thanked God the soldiers were making so much noise. As the fuse fizzed away from him, Ed hoped he hadn’t inadvertently broken the line of the fuse; hoped he hadn’t accidentally trickled the gunpowder into anything wet; hoped none of the soldiers would arrive back just at the very instant that...
Then, one did. He carried a bowlful of something. Fruit, perhaps. But either the smell or the noise alerted him and he stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked down at his boots just as the sizzle-burn of the gunpowder trail ran past his feet.
He looked up and his mouth formed an O to shout for help as Edward snatched a dagger out of his belt, pulled his arm back and threw it. Thank God for those wasted afternoons defacing trees back home at Bristol. Thank God, as the knife hit him somewhere just above the collar-bone — not an especially accurate shot, but it did the job — so that instead of shouting the alarm he made a muted, strangulated sound and slumped forward to his knees with his hands scrabbling at his neck.
The men in the clearing heard the noise of his body falling, his bowl tumbling, the fruit rolling, and turned to see its source. All of a sudden they were alert but it didn’t matter because even as they pulled their muskets from their shoulders, and a shout went up, they had no idea what hit them.
Edward had turned his back, put his hands over his ears and curled up into a ball as the explosion tore across the clearing. Something hit his back. Something soft and wet, that he didn’t particularly want to think about. From further away Edward heard shouts and knew there would be more men arriving at any moment, so he turned and ran into the clearing, past blown-up bodies of soldiers in various states of mutilation and dismemberment, most of them dead, one of them pleading for death, and through thick black smoke that filled the clearing, embers floating in the air.
DuCasse emerged from the tent, swearing in French, shouting for someone, anyone, to put out the fire. Coughing, spluttering, he waved his hand in front of his face to clear smoke and choking particles of flaming soot and peered into the fog.
And he saw Edward standing in front of him.
Edward knew that DuCasse recognized him because “you” was the only word he said before Ed drove his blade into him.
The blade hadn’t made a sound.
“You remember the gift you gave me?” The blade made a slight sucking noise as he pulled it from DuCasse's chest. “Well, it answers just fine.”
“You son of a whore,” DuCasse coughed, and blood speckled his face. Around them rained the flaming soot like satanic snow. “As bold as a musket ball, and still half as sharp,” he managed as the life drained from him.
“I’m sorry about this, mate. But I can’t risk your telling your Templar friends about me still kicking around.”
“I pity you, buccaneer. After all you have seen, after all we showed you of our Order, still you embrace the life of an ignorant and aimless rogue.” Around his neck Edward saw something he hadn’t seen before. A key on a chain. He yanked it and it came away easily in his fingers.
“Is petty larceny the extent of your ambition,” he mocked. “Have you no mind to comprehend the scope of ours? All the empires on earth, abolished! A free and opened world, without parasites like you.”
He closed his eyes, dying. His last words were, “May the hell you find be of your own making.”
Edward heard men come into the clearing behind him and knew it was time to leave.
In the distance Edward could hear more shouts and the sounds of battle and knew that his ship-mates had arrived and that the cove and galleon would soon be ours and the night’s work over. As he disappeared into the undergrowth he thought about DuCasse’s final words: May the hell you find be of your own making.
We would see about that, Edward thought. We would see.
[[ taken from the Assassin's Creed: Black Flag novelization. some gore under the cut. ]]
