“Amazing!” cried Caterina.
“I cannot imagine such wonders,” added Claudia.
“So—the Vault did not house the terrible weapon we feared—or at any rate, the Templars did not gain control of it. This at least is good news,” said Machiavelli evenly.
“What of this goddess—Minerva?” Claudia asked. “Did she appear—like us?”
“Her appearance was human, and also superhuman,” Ezio said. “Her words proved that she belonged to a race far older and greater than ours. The rest of her kind died many centuries ago. She’d been waiting for that moment all that time. I wish I had the words to describe the magic she performed.”
“What are these temples she spoke of?” put in Mario.
“I know not.”
“Did she say we should search for them? How do we know what to look for?”
“Perhaps we should—perhaps the quest will show us the way.”
“The quest must be undertaken,” said Machiavelli crisply. “But we must clear the path for it first. Tell us of the Pope. He did not die, you say?”
“When I returned, his cope lay on the chapel floor. He himself had disappeared.”
“Had he made any promises? Had he shown repentance?”
“Neither. He was bent on gaining the power. When he saw he was not going to get it, he collapsed.”
“And you left him to die.”
“I would not be the one to kill him.”
“You should have done so.”
“I am not here to debate the past. I stand by my decision. Now we should discuss the future. What we are to do.”
“What we are to do is made all the more urgent by your failure to finish off the Templar leader when you had the chance.” Machiavelli breathed hard, but then relaxed a little. “All right, Ezio. You know in what high esteem we all hold you. We would not have got anything like this far without the twenty years of devotion you have shown to the Assassins’ Brotherhood and to our Creed. And a part of me applauds you for not having killed when you deemed it unnecessary to do so. That is also in keeping with our code of honor. But you misjudged, my friend, and that means we have an immediate and dangerous task ahead of us.” He paused, scanning the assembled company with eagle eyes. “Our spies in Rome report that Rodrigo is indeed a reduced threat. He is at least somewhat broken in spirit. There is a saying that it is less dangerous to do battle with a lion’s whelp than with an old, dying lion; but in the case of the Borgia the position is quite otherwise. Rodrigo’s son, Cesare, is the man we must match ourselves against now. Armed with the vast fortune the Borgia have amassed by fair means and foul—but mostly foul”—Machiavelli allowed himself a wry smile—“he heads a large army of highly trained troops and with it he intends to take over all Italy—the whole peninsula—and he does not intend to stop at the borders of the Kingdom of Naples.”
“He would never dare—he could never do it!” Mario roared.
“He would and he could,” snapped Machiavelli. “He is evil through and through, and as dedicated a Templar as his father the Pope ever was, but he is also a fine though utterly ruthless soldier. He always wanted to be a soldier, even after his father made him Cardinal of Valencia when he was only seventeen years old! But as we all know, he resigned from that post—the first cardinal in the Church’s history to do so! The Borgia treat our country and the Vatican as if they were their own private fiefdom! Cesare’s plan now is to crush the North first, to subdue the Romagna and isolate Venice. He also intends to extirpate and destroy all of us remaining Assassins, since he knows that in the end we are the only people who can stop him.Aut Caesar, aut nihil—that’s his motto—‘Either you’re with me or you’re dead.’ And do you know, I think the madman actually believes it.”
“My uncle mentioned a sister,” Ezio began.
Machiavelli turned to him. “Yes. Lucrezia. She and Cesare are…how shall I say? Very close. They are a very close-knit family; when they are not killing those other brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, whom they find inconvenient to them, they are…coupling with each other.”
Maria Auditore could not suppress a cry of disgust.
“We must approach them with all the caution we would use to approach a nest of vipers,” Machiavelli concluded. “And God knows where and how soon they will next strike.” He paused and drank half a glass of wine. “And now, Mario, I leave you. Ezio, we will soon meet again, I trust.”
“You’re leaving this evening?”
“Time is of the essence, good Mario. I ride for Rome tonight. Farewell!”
The room was silent after Machiavelli left. After a long pause, Ezio said bitterly, “He blames me for not killing Rodrigo when I had the chance.” He looked around at them. “You all do!”
“Any of us might have made the decision you made,” said his mother. “You were sure he was dying.”
Mario came and put an arm around his shoulders. “Machiavelli knows your value—we all do. And even with the Pope out of the way, we’d still have had to deal with his brood—”
“But if I had cut off the head, could the body have survived?”
“We must deal with the situation as it is, good Ezio, not with it as it might have been.” Mario clapped him on the back. “And now, as we are in for a busy day tomorrow, I suggest we dine and then prepare for an early night!”
Caterina’s eyes met Ezio’s. Did he imagine it, or was there a flicker of the old lust there? He shrugged inwardly. Perhaps he’d just imagined it.
SEVEN
Ezio ate lightly—justpollo ripieno with roasted vegetables; and he drank his Chianti cut half-and-half with water. There was little conversation at dinner, and he answered his mother’s string of questions politely but laconically. After all the tension that had mounted in anticipation of the meeting, and which had now melted away, he was very tired. He had barely had a chance to rest since leaving Rome, and it looked now as if it would be a long time still before he could realize a long-cherished ambition of spending some time back in his old home in Florence, reading and walking in the surrounding gentle hills.
As soon as he decently could, he made his excuses to the company and set off for his bedroom, a large, quiet, dimly lit space on one of the upper floors, with a view across the countryside rather than the town. Once he’d reached it and dismissed the servant, he let go of the steeliness that had supported him throughout the day, and his very body slumped, his shoulders sagged, and his walk eased. His movements were slow and deliberate. He moved across the room to where the servant had already drawn him a bath. He approached it, tugging at his boots and taking off his clothes as he did so, and, naked, stood for a moment, his clothes bundled in his hands, before a full-length mirror on a stand near the copper tub. He looked at his reflection with weary eyes. Where had the four long decades gone? He straightened. He was older, stronger even, certainly wiser; but he could not deny the profound fatigue he felt.
He threw his clothes onto the bed. Under it, in a locked elm chest, were the secret Codex weapons Leonardo da Vinci had once fashioned for him. He would check them over first thing in the morning, after the council of war he’d be holding with his uncle. The original hidden-blade never left him except when he was naked, and then it was always within arm’s reach. He wore it always; it had become part of his body.
Sighing with relief, Ezio slipped into the bath. Immersed to his neck in the hot water, breathing in the gently scented steam, he closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath of relief. Peace at last. And he had better make the most of the few short hours he had of it.
He had dozed off and begun to dream when the softest of noises, the door opening and closing behind its heavy tapestry hanging, caused him to awake, instantly alert, like a wild animal. Silently his hand sought the blade and with a practiced movement he attached it to his wrist. Then, in one fluid motion he turned and stood upright in the tub, poised for action and looking in the direction of the door.
“Well,” said Caterina, grinning
as she approached, “you certainly haven’t lost any inches with the years.”
“You have the advantage of me,Contessa.” Ezio smiled. “You are fully clothed.”
“I expect we could arrange something to change that. But I am waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For you to say that you don’t really need to see for yourself. For you to say that you are sure, even without seeing my naked body, that Nature has been as kind to me, if not kinder, as she has been to you.” Her grin broadened at Ezio’s confusion. “But I remember you were never as good at paying compliments as you were at ridding the world of Templars.”
“Come here!”
He drew her to him, pulling at the girdle of her skirt as her fingers flew first at the blade, detaching it, and then at the laces of her bodice. Seconds later he had lifted her into the bath with him, their lips glued to one another’s and their naked limbs entwined.
They did not linger in the bath long, but soon got out, drying each other on the rough linen towels the servant had left. Caterina had brought a vial of scented massage oil with her and drew it from a pocket of her dress.
“Now, lie on the bed,” she said. “I want to make sure you are good and ready for me.”
“Surely you can see that I am.”
“Indulge me. Indulge yourself.”
Ezio smiled. This was better than sleep. Sleep could wait.
Sleep, Ezio found, was obliged to wait three hours. Then she curled up in his arms. She fell asleep before him and he watched her for a while. Nature had indeed been kind to her. Her slender yet curvaceous body, with its narrow hips, broad shoulders, and small but perfect breasts, was still that of a twenty-year-old, and her cloud of fine, fine light red hair that tickled his chest as she laid her head on it carried the same scent that had driven him wild all those years ago. Once or twice in the depths of the night, he woke to find he had rolled away from her, and when he took her in his arms again, she nestled up to him with a tiny sigh of joy and closed her hand round his forearm; but she did not wake. Ezio wondered later if this hadn’t been the best night of love of his life.
They overslept, of course, but Ezio was not about to forgo another bout in favor of cannon practice, though a part of his mind reproved him for this. Meanwhile, he could distantly hear the sounds of marching men—clattering men moving at arunning march—and shouted orders, and then, the boom of cannon.
“Target practice with the new cannon,” said Ezio, when for a moment Caterina stopped him and looked at him quizzically. “Maneuvers. Mario’s a hard taskmaster.”
The heavy brocade curtains across the windows shut out most of the light and the room remained cocooned in comfortable dimness; and no servant came to disturb them. Soon, Caterina’s moans of pleasure drowned out any other noise to his ear. His hands tightened around her strong buttocks—she was pulling him up urgently toward her, when their lovemaking was interrupted by more than just the roar of cannon.
Suddenly, the peace and the softness of the big room was shattered. The windows blew away with a mighty roar, taking a part of the stone outer wall with them, as a gigantic cannonball smashed in and landed, searing hot, inches from the bed. The floor sagged under its weight.
Ezio had thrown himself protectively and instinctively over Caterina at the first instant of danger, and in that moment the lovers transformed themselves into professionals and colleagues—after all, if they were toremain lovers, they first had to survive.
They leapt from the bed, throwing on their clothes. Ezio noticed that apart from the delicious vial of oil, Caterina had concealed a very useful jagged-edged dagger beneath her skirts.
“What the hell—?” Ezio cried.
“Go and find Mario,” said Caterina urgently.
Another ball flew in, shattering the beams over their recently vacated bed and smashing it to pieces.
“My troops are in the main courtyard,” said Caterina. “I’ll find them and get them around the back of the citadel and see if we can’t outflank them there. Tell Mario that’s what I’ve decided.”
“Thank you,” said Ezio. “Stay out of sight.”
“I wish I’d had time to change,” she said, laughing. “We’d better book into analbergo next time, eh?”
“Let’s make damned sure thereis a next time,” rejoined Ezio, laughing, too, but nervously, and strapping on his sword.
“You bet!Arrivederci!” cried Caterina, rushing from the room without forgetting to blow him a kiss.
He looked at the ruins of the bed. The Codex weapons—the double-blade, the poison-blade, the pistol—were buried under it, in all probability destroyed. At least he still had his hidden-blade. Even inextremis he would never forget that. His murdered father’s last bequest.
EIGHT
Ezio had no idea what time it was, but sense told him attacks usually began at dawn, when the victims were still confused and wiping the sleep out of their eyes. He was lucky that his training had bestowed on him, even after he’d reached the age of forty, the alertness and agility of a wildcat.
Once outside and on the battlements, he scanned the landscape around the little town. The town itself, now below him as he skirted around, was in flames in many quarters. He saw where the tailor’s shop was burning and Angelina’s house, too.
There would be no birthday party for poor Claudia tonight.
He ducked as another cannonball smashed into the ramparts. For God’s love, what guns were their attackers bringing to bear? How could they reload and fire so fast? Who was behind this?
Through the smoke and dust he made out Mario, dodging toward him through crumbling masonry. Ezio leapt off the ramparts to land in a crouch near Mario and ran to join him.
“Uncle!Che diavolo…?”
Mario spat. “They’ve caught us on our back foot. It’s the Borgia!”
“Fottere!”
“We underestimated Cesare. They must have massed to the east during the night.”
“What must we do?”
“The main thing is to get all the townspeople clear—those who haven’t already been killed. We’ve got to hold them off until we’ve done that. If they take the town with the people still inside it, they’ll kill them all—everyone in Monteriggioni is either an Assassin or an Assassin’s abettor, in their eyes.”
“I know the route out. Leave it to me.”
“Good man. I’ll muster our defenders and give them everything we’ve got.” Mario paused. “Look. Let’s take them on first. You go and command the cannon on the ramparts.”
“And you?”
“I’ll lead a frontal assault. Take the battle to the bastards.”
“Caterina is going to try to take her forces around the flank.”
“Good. Then we are in with a chance. Nowhurry!”
“Wait!”
“What is it?”
Ezio lowered his voice. “Where is the Apple?” He did not tell his uncle that the Codex weapons had been destroyed by one of the first cannonades. Inwardly he prayed that, by some miracle, his path would cross with Leonardo’s again, for he did not doubt that the master of all the arts and sciences would help him reconstruct them, in case of need. In the meantime, he had the hidden-blade still, and he was a past master himself in the use of conventional weapons.
“The Apple is safe,” Mario reassured him. “Now go. And if you see that the Borgia show theslightest chance of breaching the walls, shift your attention to evacuating the town. Do you understand?”
“Sì, zio mio.”
Mario placed his hands on Ezio’s shoulders and looked at him gravely for a long moment. “Our fate is only partially in our own hands. There is only a certain amount of it that we can control. But never forget,never forget, nephew—that whatever happens to you, or to me, this day, there is never a feather lost by a sparrow that is not brushed away by the finger of God.”
“I understand,Capitano.”
There was a brief moment of silence between them. Then Mario extended
his hand.
“Insieme per la vittoria!”
Ezio took his uncle’s hand in his and wrung it fervently.“Insieme!”
Mario turned to go.
Ezio said, “Capitano—be careful!”
Mario nodded grimly. “I’ll do my best! And you—take my best horse and get to the outer walls as fast as you can!” He drew his sword and, with his great war cry rallying his men, ran toward the foe.
Ezio watched him briefly and then ran himself toward the stable, where the old groom whose runaway horse he’d saved only the day before was waiting. The huge chestnut was saddled and ready.
“Maestro Mario had already sent orders,” the old man said. “I may be past my prime, but no one could ever accuse me of being inefficient.Ma attenzione! This horse is full of spirit!”
“I brought him to heel yesterday. He’ll know me today.”
“True enough!Buona fortuna! We all depend on you!”
Ezio swung himself into the saddle and urged the eager horse toward the outer walls.
He rode through the already devastated town. The tailor, dead and mutilated in front of his shop. What harm had he ever done anyone? And Angelina, weeping in front of her burned-down house; what was the point of not showing her pity?
War—that was all. Brutalizing and cruel. Vicious and infantile. Ezio’s gorge rose at it.
Freedom and Mercy. And Love. These were the only things worth fighting for, worth killing for—and these were the prime elements of the Assassin’s Creed. Of the Brotherhood.
Ezio, as he rode forth, encountered scenes of terrible desolation. Devastation and chaos surrounded him as his horse carried him through the burning town.
“My children! Where are my children?” a young mother screamed as he passed, helplessly.
“Just pack what you can and let’s get out of here!” cried out a man’s voice.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Page 4
