The prisoners howled under the deck as HMS Gibraltar sailed towards Nassau, following her sister ship, the Odin. I stood besides the captain, following the twinkling lights of the Odin in front of us. The fog had risen and it became harder to see the man-o'-war moment by moment. There was something eerie about that particular night – the sea had calmed and we slid through the still, murky, ink-black water almost without a sound, only the call of our prisoners emerging from the deck below. Not even the crew made a sound, but only looked at the sea with uneasy eyes.
"Tell those mongrels in the cells to shut up" said my captain to a crewmember standing nearby, who nodded and ran off. My captain shared my nervousness. He was biting his teeth together, his jaw clenched and his eyes looking for anything that could be a threat, always returning to HMS Odin who was still steadily leading us towards our destination. The mourning and wailing of the prisoners faded away. Only the echo lingered on the silent sea.
Soon enough we found ourselves from a cloud. The fog had reached us, surrounded us from all the sides and would have blocked our view if it wasn't for the lanterns of Odin still offering some hope from the whiteness. I had sailed in fog many times, so had my captain and all of the men on the ship. But there was something else in it this time. There was something sinister in the white, thick fog and the still water quietly beating the sides of our ship.
I glanced over the rail and into the water, and saw a shadow of my own head look back at me. But it was wrong. It felt like it was someone else, someone or something staring back at me from the black, waiting for me to join it. A wave hit the shadow and it broke. I pulled myself out and, seeing the familiar twinkle of light in front of us, breathed deep, eased my spinning head and walked back to my position, next to the captain. There was nothing in the sea, nothing that would offend us tonight.
"You need to ease your head, Chetham" my captain said.
"Yes, sir. Whatever you say" I hastily answered and he looked at me. I let out a cough, shifted my weight from other foot to another, focusing my eyes into the Odin. "A brig, captain!" I heard a yell from behind us and flinched. My captain turned around and let me have the helm as he took the magnifyer, soon realizing he wouldn't need it. The brig was already close, and slowly creeped towards.
Like a flash of lightning, the lonely yell had woken up everyone on the ship. Everyone was on their feet, their eyes glimmering in the moonlight as they stared at me holding the helm, expecting orders. I glanced over my shoulder and let the captain have his helm again while I turned to see our shadow.
I don't know what was the most uneasing about the brig. The sails were gray rags, the figurehead's gargoyle face pulled into a grotesque grin, staring at us with it's empty eyes. As it creeped forward, I started to see men on the deck. Like the ship, they didn't say a word, didn't even move, just stood there silent, watching us. And like from a mutual order, as the ship reached us, they slowly pulled a sail up to match our speed and then they returned where they had stood.
I swallowed as I watched the men. They had their eyes peeled on us, some of them were handling weapons. One of them held a butcher's knife in his hand, some had muskets or pistols. As I looked at them more closely, I saw some of them smiling. Not happily, not kindly, but with ruthlessness in the corner of their eyes. My hand found it's way on the grip of my sword. "Keep a close watch on them, Chetham" captain growled quietly. I couldn't answer – my heart was beating in my throat.
And then I saw the captain.
The instance I saw his face, he turned his gaze at me as if he knew who was looking at him. His deep blue eyes stared at me, barely blinking, shining like azurite from under the shadow of his white hood. But the worst thing was his smile. The malevolent grin meaning nothing but horror and pain pulled up the corners of his mouth, his teeth shining. He was a shocking contrast to the man standing besides him, a tall, strong black man with a face that could have been carved out of stone - so emotionless and static was his expression. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything until the captain turned his piercing eyes away, and after released from his grip I had to lean to the railing, sighing in relief.
My eyes pulled up to the main mast. And there, flapping lazily in the gust of wind was a flag. A pitch black flag. The skull in the middle anticipating death to everyone.
In horror, I turned my face to the captain of the pirate ship, only to see him draw breath.
"Fire!"
The night exploded into the sound of the cannons, wood tearing, bending and breaking and the screams of the dozens under the deck. I grabbed on to the railing, my knuckles white, to keep myself on my feet. "Orders, captain!" I screamed over my shoulder as the brig lowered all it's sails and turned away from us, soon escaping into the fog.
"Shoot, dammit! Shoot!" yelled our captain and I repeated the order, yelling as hard as I could. Our men ran in disarray, some managed to shoot at the side where the attack came from but all too late – the brig was too far away and the scattered shots we delivered fell to the sea and sunk without ever reaching their target.
Captain turned the ship and I tried to look around for the pirates. Not too long after we heard another command to fire and the sound of cannons mercilessly bombarding the side of a ship. In the fog in front of us, the Odin bursted into flames. The men on board screamed in horror and I saw a man on fire fall from the ship, sinking into the dark water. So horrified I was from the sight in front of us, I didn't notice the flames drawing nearer by the moment. "Captain!" I heard a scream from the deck. "We are heading straight towards the Odin!"
"Slow down!" I yelled. "Stop the ship! Full stop!"
Too late.
HMS Gibraltar smashed into the side of HMS Odin, burning wood spreading everywhere and the impact shaking the whole ship. A wretched scream from a man in the mast came to it's end when the poor man crashed on the deck, a pool of blood spreading around his head.
The men were screaming out of pain and fear, calling out the names of their poor friends in hope of finding something to rely on. The pirates dove from the fog again, the men in the masts and on the deck mercilessly picking our men from the ships with their muskets and pistols. The wood on the railing chipped as a bullet struck it, just inches away from my face, a splinter sinking into my cheek.
I saw the captain of the Odin on the deck, trying to turn the helm in hopes of escaping. But the sails were burning and water flooding into the lower decks, and from the hopelessness on his gaunt face I knew he felt death upon him already.
From the fog I saw the muzzle blasts of the cannons on the brig and heard the explosion, the cannonballs tearing the Odin in front of us to pieces. I saw a man screaming in the midst of the blasts and the fire raging around him, screaming mercy, screaming from the bottom of his lungs until the ship sunk under the grim, black water, pulling him into his watery grave.
And then nothing was left to prove the presence of the Odin, the mighty man-o'-war or it's brave crew. Nothing else but pieces of still smoldering wood floating on the water. "Captain, we..." I started, turning to my captain before my voice faded away. My captain was leaning to the helm senseless, his arms weakly flailing from one side to another as the water moved the rudder.
He was dead, shot by the pirates. But the men on the deck, if still alive and in their senses, screamed for him, screamed for advice or any hope of surviving anymore. I shoved my captain's body away from the helm and took it.
"Full sail! Take everything you can! Everything you got!" I yelled and turned the helm, the ship answering me and turning away from the pirates. I heard their howls from their ship, their laughter and mockery. Clenching my only hope of escaping alive with my knuckles white, I kept yelling commands while the able men loaded the cannons and mortars for the worst case scenario.
"She's reaching us! We can't escape her!" a man behind me yelled.
"Fire the mortars!" I commanded, and the men obeyed. The shells bombarded the brig behind us, ripped her sails and, deducing from the yells and screams, hurt at least someone. Now the pirates were screaming foul insults at us, howling like an angry pack of wolves ready to close in to their prey.
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead to the helm, praying. I prayed for all that's good and holy. I begged the God to save me, to make the ship fast enough, to spare my life.
The horrific sound of cannonballs destroying the hull woke me up from my prayers. Powerless, I couldn't but stare as my men were picked from the deck with their muskets, or fell to the sea. I felt the deck tilt under my feet. I lost. We lost.
The screams of the man begging mercy on Odin echoing in my ears, I slipped into the sea as HMS Gibraltar followed her sister into the deep. The last thing I saw was a piece of driftwood floating in front of me.
I didn't know how long I had been sleeping when I woke up to the seawater beating my face. Coughing, I lifted my head from the plank I had rested on. The sunrise started painting the horizon red, and in the little light I had I saw the results of the battle. Burnt wood and bodies floating everywhere, shreds of the sails tangled in broken masts like sad reminders of how they used to raise towards the sky.
Out of the blue, a pair of arms grabbed me and pulled me into a rowboat, taking me to a bigger ship. I was at first too weak to protest or even watch who had taken me aboard, but then I saw black boots walk in front of me and stop.
As I coughed all the water out of my lungs and slowly looked up to my saviour, I saw the same azurite eyes and the same malevolent grin.
"Join us" said Edward Kenway, captain of the Jackdaw. "Or die."