Assassin's creed : Black flag - Bowden Oliver (библиотека книг .txt) 📗

“Very simply. Most pirates are as ignorant as apes. I merely offered them a choice . . . Take a pardon and return to England penniless but free men, or be hanged by the neck until dead. It took some work to dislodge the criminals there, but we managed it. In future, I hope to use the same tactics throughout the West Indies.”

“Ah,” I said. “I imagine Nassau would be your next target.”

“Very astute, Duncan. Indeed. Point of fact . . . The moment I return to England, I intend to petition King George with the hope of becoming his emissary in the Bahamas. As governor, no less.”

So that was it. Nassau was the next step. A place I had come to think of as my spiritual home was under threat—from the carriage-gun, the musket ball or maybe just the scratch of a quill. But under threat all the same.

I managed to distinguish myself in the shooting and was feeling pretty pleased with myself all told. Once again my thoughts returned to the reward. As soon as I had my money I could return to Nassau, and once there warn Edward and Benjamin that the infamous Woodes Rogers had a Bahamas-shaped bee in his bonnet for our little pirate republic. That he was coming for us.

Then a box was opened, and I heard Rogers say, “Wonderful. You’re a crack shot, Duncan. As good with a pistol as with your wrist blade, I imagine.”

Wrist blade, I thought, distantly. Wrist blade?

“If only he had one,” DuCasse was saying as I peered at several sets of hidden blades displayed in the box—blades the same as those I had reluctantly discarded on the beach at Cape Buena Vista. “Duncan, where are your wrist blades? I have never seen an Assassin so ill-equipped.”

Again: assassin. As in, Assassin.

“Ah, damaged, sadly, beyond repair,” I replied.

DuCasse indicated the selection in the box. “Then have your choice,” he purred. Was it his thick French accent or did he mean to make it sound more like a threat than an offer?

I wondered where the blades were from. Other assassins, of course. (But assassins or Assassins?) Walpole had been one, but had been meaning to convert. A traitor? But what was this “order” which he’d been planning to join?

“These are souvenirs,” Julien was saying.

Dead men’s blades. I reached into the box and drew one out. The blade shone and its fixings trailed against my arm. At which point it dawned on me. They wanted me to use it, to see me in action. Whether as a test or for sport, it didn’t matter. Either way they wanted a display of proficiency in a weapon I’d never used before.

Straight away I went from congratulating myself on having thrown the bloody thing away (it would have given me away!) to cursing myself for not having kept it (I could have practised and been competent with it by then).

I squared my shoulders in Duncan Walpole’s robes. An imposter. All of a sudden, I had to be him. I had to really be him.

They watched as I strapped on the blade. A weak joke about being out of practice elicited polite but humourless chuckles. With it on I let my sleeve drop down over my hand and as we walked began to flex my fingers, adjusting my wrist and feeling for the tell-tale catch of the blade engaging.

Walpole’s blade had been wet that day we fought. Who knows—perhaps it really had been damaged. This one, greased and shined, would surely be more cooperative?

I prayed it would be. Imagined the looks on their faces if I simply failed to make it work.

“Are you sure you are who you say you are?”

“Guards!”

Instinctively I found myself seeking out the nearest escape route and not only that, but wishing I’d just left the bloody pouch of documents where I’d found it; wishing I’d left Walpole well alone. What was wrong with life as Edward Kenway anyway? I was poor but at least I was alive. I could have been back in Nassau at that moment, planning raids with Edward and eyeing up Anne Bonny at The Old Avery.

Edward had warned me not to join Captain Bramah. From the moment I’d suggested it, he told me Bramah was bad news. Why hadn’t I bloody listened?

The voice of Julien DuCasse interrupted my thoughts.

“Duncan,” he pronounced it Dern-kern, “would you indulge us with a demonstration of your techniques?”

I was being tested. Every question, every challenge they threw my way—it was all an attempt to force me to prove my mettle. So far I’d passed. Not with flying colours, but I’d passed.

But we’d stepped outside the confines of the courtyard and I was greeted with what looked like a newly constructed practice area, tall palms lining either side of a grassed avenue, with targets at one end and just beyond that what looked like an ornamental lake, shimmering like a plateful of blue sunshine.

Behind the tree line, shadows moved among the scaly trunks of the palm trees. More guards, in case I made a break for it.

“We put together a small training course in the anticipation of your arrival,” said Rogers.

I swallowed.

My hosts stood to one side: expectant. Rogers still carried the pistol, held loosely in one hand, but his finger was on the trigger and Julien rested his right palm on the hilt of his sword. Behind the trees the figures of the guards stood motionless, waiting. Even the chirruping of insects and birds seemed to drop away.

“It would be a shame to leave here without seeing you in action.”

Woodes Rogers smiled but his eyes were cold.

And just my luck, the only weapon I had I couldn’t bloody use.

Doesn’t matter. I can take them anyway.

To the old Bristolian scrapper in me, they were just another pair of lairy twats outside a tavern. I thought of how I’d watched Walpole fight, with perfect awareness of his surroundings. How I could lay these two out, then be upon the nearest guards before they had a chance to even raise their muskets. Yes, I could do that, catch them unawares . . .

Now was the time, I thought. Now.

I braced and drew back my arm to throw the first punch.

And the blade engaged.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Oh well done, Duncan.” Rogers clapped. I looked from him and DuCasse to my shadow cast on the grass. I had struck quite a pose, the blade engaged. What’s more, I thought I knew how I had done it. A tensing of muscle that came as much from the upper arm as the forearm . . .

“Very impressive,” said DuCasse. He stepped forward, held my arm with one hand that he used to release a catch, then, very carefully, used the flat of his other palm to ease the blade back into its housing.

“Now, let’s see you do it again.”

Without taking my eyes off him, I took a step back then assumed the same position. This time there was no luck involved, and even though I didn’t know quite what I was doing I had perfect confidence it would work. Don’t ask me how I knew. I just did. Sure enough: Snick. The blade sprang from the support and glinted evilly in the afternoon sun.

“A little noisy,” I smiled, getting cocky now. “Ideally, you’d not hear a thing. Otherwise, they’re fine.”

Their challenges were interminable but by the end I felt I was performing for their pleasure rather than their reassurance. Any tests were over. The guards had drifted away, and even DuCasse, who wore his wariness like a favoured old coat, seemed to have dropped his guard. By the time we left the makeshift training area, he was talking to me like an old friend.

“The Assassins have trained you well, Duncan,” he said.

The Assassins, I thought. So that’s what this group were called. Walpole had been a member but intended to betray his brothers, low-down scum-sucker he obviously was.