by Yan LeiSheng
Assassin’s Creed The Ming Storm
A cold gleam suddenly flashed towards her, like a light. Like…
A blade!
Shao Jun drew her weapon in an instant. Anyone who was able to get this close without being noticed had to be dangerous. When he leapt, she guessed from his moves that while he was not a member of the Eight Tigers, he was at the very least one of Zhang Yong’s henchmen.
His sword skimmed past her feet at incredible speed. Crack! The branch she was standing on suddenly snapped.
Shao Jun was fast, but her attacker was faster. After slicing the young woman’s first perch, he quickly cut the second she had just landed on, and began sweeping the air with wide, slicing strokes. He leapt straight upwards towards Shao Jun to sink his weapon into her heart, only to strike at thin air.
Impossible! He swore. The young woman flew through the air like a supernatural spirit.
Also in the Assassin’s Creed® series
Renaissance
Brotherhood
The Secret Crusade
Revelations
Forsaken
Black Flag
Unity
Underworld
Heresy
Desert Oath
Odyssey
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Geirmund’s Saga
© 2021 Ubisoft Entertainment.
All rights reserved. Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.
First published by Aconyte Books in 2021.
ISBN 978 1 83908 088 3
Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 089 0
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Cover art by Simon Goinard
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Prologue
The waves blossomed across the sea, whipped up by the wind, like so many flowers of blue-green water on the surface of the swell.
Taki Choji admired the marvelous sparkle from his seat upon a rock at the water’s edge, reminded of the canons read during his training as a monk in which the eyes of the Buddha were compared to the lotus flower. Excommunicated at the age of fifteen, he offered his blade in service to a lord before becoming a masterless ronin, then a pirate, and had banished his childhood at the monastery to the depths of his mind to best avoid any form of compassion. What was reviving such old memories now?
A white sail caught his attention. Keeping his eyes on it, he called out “Katana! Katana!”
A young man ran to him.
“Yes, Father!”
The young man, still wearing the clothes of a child, was an orphan collected by Taki Choji at the start of his outlaw career. Back then, his band numbered only five and could attack only small, lonely trading vessels, until one day he decided to force destiny’s hand by assaulting a large, stranded ship. He had scarcely boarded the ship when his nostrils were assailed by a terrible stench: the deck was strewn with the bodies of the crew, victims of a previous attack. As Taki Choji searched the vessel for any morsels of value, he discovered a small boy, unable to walk or talk and half dead from hunger and thirst, who weakly waved a katana as he approached. The child had survived five or six days among decomposing corpses, and still seemed determined to face a new pirate attack! This strength of character kindled something in the normally emotionless Taki Choji, and he chose to adopt the orphan, unimaginatively naming him Katana.
At barely sixteen years old, he could have been born to sail the sea. His swimming abilities and fierce temperament, forged through their piratical way of life, made him an essential member of his adoptive father’s crew.
Taki Choji rose and pointed at the small sail on the horizon.
“Katana, that’s likely Chief Sun. Tell the others to get ready.”
The adolescent shaded his eyes as he scanned the sea in turn.
“Isn’t that Wang’s ship?”
“No, Wang’s sails are ashen.”
While his men were vagabonds with no attachments or resources of their own, Taki Choji was slightly more educated. He had learned it was in his interest to limit the disturbances he caused at the edges of the Ming empire. To this end, he had concluded agreements with some coastal villages. Each month they supplied him with some of their harvest in exchange for being left in peace. He ended up settling down on a small island with a source of fresh water, and expected Sun, one of the local chiefs, to come to pay him tribute any day now.
Best to remain on his guard, nevertheless. Taki Choji had made this island his base for a decade: it was not only home to his crew, but also to a small pier where small boats were safely moored, allowing him to run to sea at short notice. He always watched for imperial troops, who would have no moral scruples with disguising themselves as Chief Sun for a surprise attack. The Wang mentioned by Katana was another pirate haunting the seas between Japan and the Ming empire, counting both bandits and traders in his fleet. Taki Choji dreaded the imminent end of their peaceful coexistence. They had agreed, for mutual prosperity, to avoid interfering in each other’s affairs. Recently he had some minor involvement in business where Wang also had an interest, meaning a future conflict was inevitable. He was reassured that the approaching vessels did not carry Wang’s colors.
Taki Choji’s men, around a score of ronin produced by the chaos of the times, spent their time between raids drinking and gaming on the island. They eagerly awaited each delivery from Chief Sun, which would bring tables groaning with food and plentiful alcohol. Anticipating the coming feast, they abandoned their activities and rushed to watch the dock.
Eyes fixed on the approaching ship; Katana murmured, “Father, that isn’t Chief Sun.”
“Who is it?” Taki Choji asked, his sight no match for his adopted son’s sharp vision.
“An old man with pale skin… and no beard.”
The pirate captain smiled. If it was an old man, there was nothing to worry about. Perhaps Chief Sun was too busy today and had sent someone else to deliver tribute in his stead. His extensive seafaring knowledge told him that it couldn’t be carrying more than ten people, to judge by the ship’s draft. If the new arrivals had hostile intentions, he and his men would have the advantage of numbers.
“We’ll board them and see what tribute they’ve brought,” he announced.
Just then the boat docked. The gangplank had barely lowered before Taki Choji, his right-hand man and his adoptive son were mounting it before anyone on board could begin to descend. While he had set foot on Chinese soil fewer than a handful of times
in previous years, he had always remained in contact with the coast and had learned to speak fluent Mandarin. It was in this language that he spoke as he arrived on the deck, bowing with hands pressed together in greeting. “May I ask what brings these honorable visitors to our island?”
The old, beardless man Katana had spied stood at the prow of the boat. He approached and bowed in turn.
“My name is Zhang, and Chief Sun sent me to offer you his tribute. Do I have the honor of speaking to Taki Choji?”
Zhang’s attitude was friendly, and while his hair was already white, his clear voice was that of a young man. Putting it to the back of his mind, Taki Choji hastened to respond.
“Yes, I am. Thank you, and please convey my gratitude to Chief Sun.”
Zhang did not respond and gestured at several of his crew to bring forward a large wooden box on wheels, standing as high as a man and as wide as two. Sun had previously sent meat and grain, but never anything so large as this.
“Why has the chief sent this box? Where is our livestock?” Taki Choji asked, surprised.
Still beaming, Zhang replied, “Please excuse us. Two months ago, our chickens succumbed to a fever, so all we have to offer are cured meats. We will try to make up for it with the next delivery.”
While the box was large, it couldn’t have been heavy as it took only two men to move it. Irritably, the pirate expressed his concern. “Each month Chief Sun is required to deliver four hundred pounds of rice and flour, and two hundred pounds of chickens and eggs. How could all that fit inside this box?”
Zhang withdrew a brass key from inside his robes.
“Mr Taki may check for himself that the promised amounts are indeed contained inside.”
If he had continued to plead their difficulties or tried to get him to understand, the pirate would have soon unsheathed his tachi. But, perhaps calmed by the old man’s placid countenance, he reined in his anger and handed the key to one of his men.
“Waretsuku, come check the contents of this box,” he ordered. He turned towards the boat’s captain. “Mr Zhang, I need to stay with you a little while if you don’t mind.”
Taki Choji feared that the man would flee if left unattended. He could then later dispute the bandits’ count of the produce, which would force them to end this agreement to avoid losing face. Now he understood the absence of Sun, who must have hoped he could load the blame onto Zhang if the situation escalated. If the tribute was insufficient, Taki Choji wouldn’t hesitate to hold the old man as a hostage until the chief delivered the missing items. But the emissary simply wore a large, fearless smile.
“Yes, yes, naturally.”
The box was carefully rolled down the gangplank, held by a rope, where the pirates took it and pushed it inside one of the buildings. Greater in numbers than the crew of the boat, they handled so lightly that Taki Choji’s doubts grew greater. If the correct quantities were there, it had to be magic of some kind. On closer inspection, Zhang looked like he was hiding something, his expression was almost unreadable.
A man with blond hair and blue eyes emerged from the hold of the boat.
While Taki Choji had seen foreigners many times before, he was surprised to see one there. Westerners were becoming more and more common. The man moved across the deck and spoke respectfully to Zhang. “Honored captain general, everything is in order.”
The elderly man acquiesced silently, a slight smile turning up the corners of his mouth. Taki Choji struggled to understand the unusual accent but realized with surprise that the man had not called the old man by name. Fearing that the two were planning some underhanded trick, he nervously massaged the small of his back, keeping his hand close to his sword. A shout suddenly rose from behind him.
It was full of panic and terror, something not even a blade in the throat could raise from the bloodthirsty criminals under Taki Choji’s command. He turned his head, twisting his neck as a thunderous roar sounded from the camp. The slam of a door echoed. A black silhouette pierced the roof of the building and sailed into the air. It looked like a man.
The roofs of the wooden houses were not solidly built, only durable enough to resist wind and rain, but it was still incredible to see them broken through so easily. The man, who had flown around twelve feet into the air, crashed to the earth partway between the camp and the dock. His bloodied, unmoving body showed no sign of life.
Taki Choji considered the dead man and took a deep breath. It was Fukuyama Waretsuku, his assistant and a swordsman skilled in a fast and precise style which belonged to no traditional school of swordsmanship. They had served under the same lord, then after his death became itinerant wanderers before finally taking to the sea so as to never serve another. Waretsuku must have weighed at least two hundred and twenty pounds. Either he had leapt through the roof with enough force to soar into the air, which seemed less than likely. Or someone had thrown him, which would have required superhuman strength. Gripped by a sense of unease, Taki Choji set his hand on the pommel of his tachi as he assumed a defensive stance.
“Who are you?” he called, smoothly unsheathing his sword to point it at the foreigner, ready to kill him if the answer didn’t satisfy him.
With the situation turning against him, he needed to strike first. Using Strike of the Buddhist monk, a secret sword technique, he would put an end to the Westerner with the unintelligible language in no time.
Shouts rose from the camp once more, but they were less panicked, visibly disappointing the elderly man.
Taki Choji had learnt to fight in the kendo style but had refined his skill over the years at sea. Using Strike of the Buddhist monk, the blade moved from right to left, with its brutal power increased by the strength of the wielder – when attacking a ship, Taki Choji used it to slice opponents in two from shoulder to hip.
He attacked the foreigner without warning, yet the man already had his right hand at his left wrist, drawing a razor-sharp blade no wider than a finger. The Westerner pivoted in a flash, responding with a powerful thrust that would have pierced Taki Choji through if he had not been just half a foot out of reach.
The pirate exploited his opponent’s surprise by attempting to split his skull with his tachi but was blocked by Zhang’s blade with a loud clash of metal as he joined the fray. The foreigner’s face had turned ashen at his narrow escape.
Zhang’s was also a thin blade, in the style of those found on the central plains of China. Taki Choji expected to see these delicate weapons shatter under the power of his attacks, but they endured nonetheless, their force dissipated by Zhang’s agile counters.
The pirate was amazed by the speed and talent of the seemingly frail and quiet old man, who was gradually gaining the upper hand in the fight. As if to save him from this trap, there was a growl and a shadow suddenly fell over the captain’s head.
It was Katana, who had unsheathed his namesake weapon as soon as he saw his adoptive father in difficulty. Taki Choji’s men were all experts in the use of the saber or sword and the young man, rather than studying any specific school, had learned from all of them and developed a composite style adapted to his speed and light frame. In his hands the short blade, only slightly longer than a dagger, was a formidable weapon which had taken the life of six men in the past.
Zhang saw the boy make a nimble leap to strike while he was busy immobilizing Taki Choji’s sword, a spark of surprise in his eyes. Steel flashed in front of the old man’s face, as he parried the blade at the last moment. Katana ignored the spasm that ran up his arm, but Zhang seized the short blade between two fingers, turning it and pressing the palm of his hand against the boy’s heart.
The move might have seemed benign if Katana hadn’t immediately felt his strength completely drain away. Zhang took control of his pressure points and gently drew the young man towards him. A little more pressure would cause his victim to cough blood and collapse, broken. He disengaged from Taki
Choji’s sword, and the pirate quickly leapt several steps back. Faced with the sight of his adoptive son on the brink of death, he pleaded, “Mr Zhang, please have mercy!”
The captain had not expected this reaction from the cruel and merciless pirate.
“What?”
With his hand still pressed against Katana’s chest, he could end the young man at any second. The arrogant adolescent, paralyzed but still able to speak, had never imagined dying at the hands of an old man without landing even a single blow. Despite his fear, he wasn’t yet ready to give in, protesting loudly as he heard his adoptive father offer his surrender.
“Father! Don’t worry about me, kill him!”
Taki Choji’s face was pale and drained of color. He who had never once shown emotion, had never bowed before anyone, had quickly come to realize his hopeless position during the brief exchange. If it were his life in the balance, he would rather die than surrender, but Katana’s life was too precious to sacrifice for the sake of pride. How had this man been able to reduce him to such a state, incapable of even the smallest movement?
“Mr Zhang, please, let us go, and we will leave your land alone. And if you’ve come about the illegal goods, I can tell you where they are hidden,” the bandit replied in a resigned tone.
Taki Choji had long ago lost count of how many ships he had raided. He killed indiscriminately, indifferent to the pleading of the merchants, and Katana’s life was the only one that mattered to him. He assumed that Zhang must have attacked to seize control of the illicit trade he was involved in. So, even Wang wanted to get in on the business and had sent this man as his catspaw.
The old man stared at him for a moment before turning towards the foreigner, who was still pale after nearly being decapitated by the pirate’s blade.
“Would this man be any use to us?”
The Westerner nodded. “He’s strong. He’ll be useful.”
Taki Choji didn’t understand what was happening, but seeing those blue eyes examining him from head to toe made his blood boil with fear and rage. Zhang let out a short laugh.
