Revelations
( Assassin's creed - 4 )
Oliver Bowden
Revelations
Oliver Bowden
PART I
At one point midway on our path in life,
I came around and found myself now searching through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost.
How hard it is to say what that wood was, a wilderness, savage, brute, harsh and wild.
Only to think of it renews my fear!
- DANTE, INFERNO
ONE
An eagle soared, high in the hard, clear sky.
The traveler, dusty, battered from the road, drew his eyes from it, pulled himself up and over a low, rough wall, and stood motionless for a moment, scanning the scene with keen eyes. The rugged snowcapped mountains fenced in the castle, protecting it and enclosing it as it reared on the crest of its own height, the domed tower of its keep mirroring the lesser dome of the prison tower nearby. Iron rocks like claws clung to the bases of its sheer grey walls. Not the first time he’d seen it-a day earlier he’d caught his first glimpse, at dusk, from a promontory he’d climbed a mile west. Built as if by sorcery in this impossible terrain, at one with the rocks and crags it joined forces with.
He’d arrived at his goal-at last. After twelve weary months on the journey. And such a long journey-the ways deep and the weather sharp.
Crouching, just in case, and keeping still as he instinctively checked his weapons, the traveler kept watching. Any sign of movement. Any.
Not a soul on the battlements. Scuds of snow twisting in a cutting wind. But no sign of a man. The place seemed deserted. As he’d expected from what he’d read of it. But life had taught him that it was always best to make sure. He stayed still.
Not a sound but the wind. Then-something. A scraping? To his left ahead of him, a handful of pebbles skittered down a bare incline. He tensed, rose slightly, head up between ducked shoulders. Then the arrow whacked into his right shoulder, through the body armor there.
He staggered a little, grimacing in pain as his hand went to the arrow, raising his head, looking hard at the skein of a rise in the rocks-a small precipice, maybe twenty feet high-which rose before the front of the castle and served as a natural outer bailey. On its ridge there now appeared a man in a dull red tunic with grey outer garments and armor. He bore the insignia of a captain. His bare head was close-shaven, and a scar seared his face, across from right down to left. He opened his mouth in an expression that was part snarl, part smile of triumph, showing stunted and uneven teeth, brown like the tombstones in an unkempt graveyard.
The traveler pulled at the arrow’s shaft. Though the barbed head snagged on the armor, it had only penetrated the metal, and the point had scarcely penetrated his flesh. He snapped it off the shaft and threw it aside. As he did so he saw a hundred and more armed men, similarly dressed, halberds and swords ready, line up along the crest on either side of the shaven-headed captain. Helmets with nose guards hid their faces, but the black eagle crests on their tunics told the traveler who they were, and he knew what he could expect from them if they took him.
Was he getting old, to have fallen into a trap so simple? But he’d taken every precaution.
And it hadn’t succeeded yet.
He stepped back, ready for them as they poured down to the rugged platform of ground he stood on, fanning out to surround him, keeping the length of their halberds between themselves and their prey. He could sense that despite their numbers, they feared him. His reputation was known, and they were right to be wary.
He gauged the halberd heads. Double-type: axe and pike.
He flexed his arms and from his wrists his two lean, grey, deadly hidden-blades sprang. Bracing himself, he deflected the first blow, sensing that it had been hesitant-did they want to try to take him alive? Then they started digging at him from all sides with their weapons, trying to bring him to his knees.
He whirled, and with two clean movements sliced through the hafts of the nearest halberds, seizing the head of one as it flew through the air, before it could fall to earth; and taking the stump of its haft in his fist, he buried the axeblade in the chest of its former owner.
They closed in on him then, and he was just in time to stoop low as a rush of air signaled the passage of a swung pike as it sickled over him, missing his bent back by an inch. He swung round savagely and with his left-hand hidden-blade hacked deep into the legs of the attacker who’d stood behind him. With a howl, the man went down.
The traveler seized the fallen halberd, which a moment earlier had almost ended him, and swiveled it round in the air, slicing the hands off another of his assailants. The hands arched through the air, the fingers curled as if beseeching mercy, a plume of blood like a red rainbow curve trailing behind them.
That stopped them for a moment, but these men had seen worse sights than that, and the traveler had only a second’s respite before they were closing again. He swung the halberd again and left its blade deep in the neck of a man who, an instant before, had been moving in for the kill. The traveler let go of its pole and retracted his hidden-blades in one action in order to free his hands to seize a sergeant wielding a broadsword, whom he threw bodily into a knot of his troops, seizing his sword from him. He hefted its weight, feeling his biceps tense as he took a double grip and raised it just in time to cleave the helmet of another halberdier, this time coming from his rear left quarter, hoping to blindside him.
The sword was good. Better for this job than the light scimitar at his side, acquired on his journey. And the hidden-blades for close work. They had never let him down.
More men were streaming down from the castle. How many would it take to overpower this lone man? They crowded him, but he whirled and jumped to confuse them, seeking freedom from their press by hurling himself over the back of one man, finding his feet, bracing himself, deflecting a sword’s blow with the hard metal bracer on his left wrist, and turning to drive his own sword into that attacker’s side.
But then-a momentarily lull. Why? The traveler paused, getting his breath. There was a time when he would not have needed to get his breath. He looked up. Still fenced in by the troops in grey chain mail.
But among them, the traveler suddenly saw another man.
Another man. Walking between them. Unobserved, calm. A young man in white. Clad as the traveler was, otherwise, and wearing the same cowl over his head, the hood peaked, as his was, to a sharp point at the front, like an eagle’s beak. The traveler’s lips parted in wonder. All seemed silent. All seemed at rest, except for the young man in white, walking. Steadily, calmly, undismayed.
The young man seemed to walk among the fighting like a man would walk through a field of corn-as if it did not touch or affect him at all. Was that the same buckle fastening his gear, the same as the one the traveler wore? With the same insignia? The insignia that had been branded on the traveler’s consciousness and his life for over thirty years-just as surely as, long ago, his ring finger had been branded?
The traveler blinked, and when he opened his eyes, the vision-if that was what it had been-had disappeared, and the noise, the smells, the danger, were back, all around him, closing on him, rank upon rank of an enemy he knew at last that he could not overcome or escape from.
But somehow he did not feel so alone.
No time to think. They were closing in hard, as scared as they were angry. Blows rained, too many to fend off. The traveler fought hard, took down five more, ten. But he was fighting a hydra with a thousand heads. A big swordsman came up and brought a twenty-pound blade down on him. He raised his left arm to fend it off with the bracer, turning and dropping his own heavy sword as he did so to bring his right-hand hidden-blade into play. But his attacker was lucky. The
momentum of his blow was deflected by the bracer, but it was still too powerful to glance off completely. It slid toward the traveler’s left wrist and made contact with the left-hand hidden-blade, snapping it off. At the same moment, the traveler, caught off balance, stumbled on a loose rock at his feet and turned his ankle. He could not stop himself from falling facedown onto the stony ground. And there he lay.
Above him, the circle of men closed in, keeping the length of their halberds between themselves and their quarry, still tense, still scared, not yet daring to be triumphant. But the points of their pikes made contact with his back. One move, and he’d be dead.
And he was not ready for that, yet.
The crunch of boots on rock. A man approaching. The traveler turned his head slightly to see the shaven-headed captain standing over him. The scar was livid across his face. He bent close enough for the traveler to smell his breath.
The captain drew the traveler’s hood back just enough to see his face. He smiled as his expectation was confirmed.
“Ah, the Mentor has arrived. Ezio Auditore da Firenze. We’ve been expecting you-as you have no doubt realized. Must be quite a shock to you, to see your Brotherhood’s old stronghold in our hands. But it was bound to happen. For all your efforts, we were bound to prevail.”
He stood erect, turned to the troops encircling Ezio, two hundred strong, and snapped out an order. “Take him to the turret cell. Manacle him first, and strongly.”
They pulled Ezio to his feet and hastily, nervously, bound him fast.
“Just a short walk and a lot of stairs,” the captain said. “And then you’d better pray. We’ll hang you in the morning.”
High above them, the eagle continued its search for prey. No one had an eye for it. For its beauty. Its freedom.
TWO
The eagle still wheeled in the sky. A pale blue sky, bleached by the sun, though the sun was a little lower. The bird of prey, a dark silhouette, turning and turning, but with purpose. Its shadow fell on the bare rocks far below, torn jagged by them as it passed over.
Ezio watched through the narrow window-no more than a gash in the thick stone-and his eyes were as restless as the movements of the bird. His thoughts were restless, too. Had he traveled so far and for so long, only for it all to come to this?
He clenched his fists, and his muscles felt the absence of the hidden-blades, which had for so long stood him in such good stead.
But he had an idea of where they’d stowed his weapons, after they’d ambushed him and overpowered him and brought him here. A grim smile formed on his lips. Those troops, the old enemy-how surprised they’d been that such an old lion could still have so much fight in him.
And he knew this castle. From charts and diagrams. He had studied them so well that they were printed on his mind.
But here he was, in a cell in one of the topmost towers of the great fortress of Masyaf, the citadel that had once been the stronghold of the Assassins, long since abandoned, and now fallen to the Templars. Here he was-alone, unarmed, hungry, and thirsty, his clothes grimy and torn, awaiting every moment the footfall of his executioners. But not about to go quietly. He knew why the Templars were there; he had to stop them.
And they hadn’t killed him yet.
He kept his eyes on the eagle. He could see every feather, every pinion, the fanned rudder of the tail, speckled black-brown and white, like his own beard. The pure white wingtips.
He thought back. He traced the route that had brought him there-to this.
Other towers, other battlements. Like the ones at Viana, from which he had flung Cesare Borgia to his doom. That had been in the year of Our Lord 1507. How long ago was that? Four years. It might as well have been four centuries, it seemed so distant. And in the meantime, other villains, other would-be masters of the world, had come and gone, in search of the Mystery, in search of the Power, and for him, a prisoner at last, the battle to counter them had gone on.
The battle. His whole life.
The eagle wheeled and turned, its movements concentrated. Ezio watched it, knowing that it had located prey and was focusing on it. What life could there be down there? But the village that supported the castle, crouched low and unhappy in its shadow, would have livestock, and even a scrap of cultivated land somewhere nearby. A goat, maybe, down there among the tumble of grey rocks that littered the low, surrounding hills; either a young one, too inexperienced, or an old one, too tired, or one that had been injured. The eagle flew against the sun, its silhouette momentarily blotted out by the incandescent light; and then, tightening its circle, it hung, poised, at last, hanging there in the vast blue arena, before it swooped down, crashing through the air like a thunderbolt, and out of sight.
Ezio turned away from the window and looked around the cell. A bed, hard dark wood, just planks on it, no bedding, a stool, and a table. No crucifix on the wall, and nothing else except the plain pewter bowl and spoon which contained the still-untasted gruel they’d given him. That, and a wooden beaker of water, also untasted. For all his thirst and hunger, Ezio feared drugs that might weaken him, render him powerless when the moment came. And it was all too possible that the Templars would have drugged the food and drink they gave him.
He turned around in the narrow cell, but the rough stone walls gave him neither comfort nor hope. There was nothing here he could use to escape. He sighed. There were other Assassins, others in the Brotherhood who knew of his mission, who had wanted to accompany him, even, despite his insistence that he travel alone. Perhaps, when no news came, they would take up the challenge. But then, perhaps, it would be too late.
The question was, how much did the Templars already know? How much of the secret did they already have in their possession?
His quest, which had now come to such an abrupt halt at the moment of its fruition, had begun soon after his return to Rome, where he had bid farewell to his companions, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli, on his forty-eighth birthday, Midsummer Day. Niccolo was to return to Florence, Leonardo to Milan. Leonardo had spoken of taking up a pressing offer of much-needed patronage from Francis, heir apparent to the throne of France, and a residence in Amboise, on the River Loire. At least, that was what his letters had revealed to Ezio.
Ezio smiled at the memory of his friend. Leonardo, whose mind was ever teeming with new ideas though it always took him a while to get around to them. He thought ruefully of the hidden-blade, which had been shattered in the fight when they’d ambushed him. Leonardo-how he missed him!-the one man he could have really trusted to mend it. But at least Leonardo had sent him the plans he’d made for a new device, which he called a parachute. Ezio had had it constructed back in Rome, and it was packed with his kit, and he doubted if the Templars would make much sense of it. He would put it to good use as soon as he got a chance.
If he got a chance.
He steeled himself against dark thoughts.
But there was nothing to do, no means of escape, until they came to get him, to hang him. He would have to plan what to do then. He imagined that, as so often in the past, he would have to extemporize. In the meantime, he’d try to rest his body. Still fit, he’d made sure of that in training before this journey, and the journey itself had hardened him. But he was glad-even in these circumstances-of the chance to rest after that fight.
It had all started with a letter.
Under the benevolent eye of Pope Julius II, who had aided him in his vanquishing of the Borgia family, Ezio had rebuilt and restructured the Assassins’ Brotherhood in Rome and established his power base there.
For a while at least, the Templars were in abeyance, and Ezio left the running of operations in the capable hands of his sister Claudia; but the Assassins remained vigilant. They knew that the Templars would regroup, secretly, elsewhere, insatiable in their quest for the instruments by which they could at last control the world in accordance with their somber tenets.
They were bested for the moment, but the beast was not dead.
Ez
io drew comfort and satisfaction from the fact-and he shared this dark knowledge with Machiavelli and Leonardo alone-that the Apple of Eden, which had fallen into his care, and which had caused so much anguish and death in the battle for its possession, was buried and hidden deep in the vaults below the Church of San Nicola in Carcere, in a secret sealed room whose location they had marked only with the sacred symbols of the Brotherhood-which only a future Assassin would be able to discern, let alone decipher. The greatest Piece of Eden was safely concealed from the ambitious grasp of the Templars-as Ezio hoped, forever.
After the damage wrought to the Brotherhood by the Borgias, there had been much to retrieve, much to put in order, and to this task Ezio had devoted himself, uncomplainingly, although he was far more inclined to open air and action than to poring over papers in dusty archives. That was a job more suited to his late father’s secretary, Giulio, or to the bookish Machiavelli; but Machiavelli was busy commanding the Florentine militia these days, and Giulio was long dead.
Still, Ezio reflected, if he hadn’t saddled himself with the responsibility for what was to him a dreary task, he might never have found the letter. And if another had, that person might not have guessed its significance.
The letter, which he’d found in a leather satchel, brittle with age, was from Ezio’s father, Giovanni, to his brother Mario, the man who’d taught Ezio the art of war and initiated him into the Brotherhood three long decades earlier. Mario. Ezio flinched at the memory. Mario, who had died at the cruel and cowardly hands of Cesare Borgia in the wake of the battle of Monteriggioni.
Mario had long since been avenged, but the letter Ezio found opened a new chapter, and its contents proffered him the chance of a new mission. It was 1509 when he’d found it, and he’d just turned fifty; he knew that the chance of new missions seldom came to men of his age. Besides, the letter offered him the hope and the challenge of closing the gates of opportunity on the Templars forever.
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