Revelations ac-4

by Oliver Bowden

  SEVEN

  When Ezio came to, he was lying on his back somewhere, and the world was rocking beneath him. Not violently, but steadily. It was almost comforting. He stayed where he was for a moment, eyes still closed, feeling a breeze on his face, not quite wanting to come back to whatever reality was waiting to confront him, smelling the sea air.

  The sea air?

  He opened his eyes. The sun was up, and he could see an unbroken expanse of blue sky. Then a dark shape came between the sky and him. A head and shoulders. A concerned face, looking down at him.

  “You’re back. Good,” said the big man.

  Ezio started to sit up, and as he did so the pain from his wound hit him. He groaned and put a hand to his side. He felt bandages.

  “Flesh wound. Not too deep. Nothing to make a fuss about.”

  Ezio raised himself. His next thought was for his kit. He looked around swiftly. There it was, neatly stashed in his leather bag, and it looked untouched. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Where do you think? At sea.”

  Painfully, Ezio stood and looked about him. They were in one of the fishing dhows, cutting steadily through the water, the sail above his head fat with wind. He turned, and could see Larnaka, a speck on the coastline of Cyprus, on the distant horizon behind them.

  “What happened?”

  “You saved my life. I saved yours.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the Law. Pity though. After what you did to me, you had it coming.”

  The man had had his back to him, working the tiller, but now he turned to Ezio. For the first time Ezio had a good look at his face and recognized him instantly.

  “You wrecked my ships, curse you. I’d been stalking the Anaan for days. That prize would have taken me back to Egypt a rich man. Instead, thanks to you, they made a galley slave of me. Me!” The big man was indignant.

  “Egypt? You’re not a Berber then?”

  “Berber be damned. I’m a Mamluk though I may not look like one dressed in these rags. Soon as we get there, I’m treating myself to a woman, a decent plate of kofta, and a good suit of clothes.”

  Ezio looked around him again, stumbling then regaining his balance as an unexpected wave chopped aslant the bow.

  “Not much of a seaman, are you?”

  “Gondolas are more my line.”

  “Gondolas? Pah!”

  “If you wanted to kill me-”

  “Can you blame me? It was the only reason I hung around in that cesspool of a Venetian port after I’d escaped. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw you. I’d almost given up-I was looking for a way out myself, down there.”

  Ezio grinned. “I don’t blame you.”

  “You chucked me in a tank and left me to drown!”

  “You could swim well enough. Any fool could see that.”

  It was the big man’s turn to grin. “Ah! I might have known I couldn’t appeal to your compassion by pretending that I couldn’t.”

  “You repaid your debt to me, you saved my life. But why did you bring me with you?”

  The big man spread his hands. “You were wounded. If I’d left you, they’d have come for you, you wouldn’t have lasted the night. And what a waste of my effort that would have been. Besides, you can make yourself useful on this tub, landlubber though you are.”

  “I can look after myself.”

  The big man’s eyes grew serious. “I know you can, effendi. Maybe I just wanted your company-Ezio Auditore.”

  ‘You know my name.”

  “You’re famous. Vanquisher of pirates. Not that that would have saved you after killing a team of watchmen and trying to escape.”

  Ezio thought about that. Then he said, “What do they call you?”

  The big man drew himself up. His dignity belied the galley slave’s rags he still wore. “I am Al-Scarab, scourge of the White Sea.”

  “Oh,” said Ezio wryly. “Pardon me.”

  “Temporarily on my back foot,” Al-Scarab added ruefully. “But not for long. When we get there, I’ll have a new ship and crew within a week.”

  “When we get where?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? The nearest port worth anything, that’s also in Mamluk hands-Acre.”

  EIGHT

  The time had come.

  It was hard to leave, but his mission was imperative, and it called Ezio urgently onward. His time in Acre had been one of rest and recuperation, forcing himself to be patient as his wound healed, for he knew his quest would come to nothing of he were not fully fit for it. And meeting Al-Scarab, disastrous as it would have been if things had gone differently, had shown him that if any guardian angel existed, he had one.

  The big pirate, whom he had bested in the battle aboard the Anaan , had proved himself to be more than just a lifesaver. Al-Scarab had extended family in Acre, and they welcomed Ezio as the rescuer of their cousin and as his brother-in-arms. Al-Scarab said nothing of his defeat in the Anaan incident and enjoined Ezio on pain of unmentionable retribution to follow suit. But the escape from Larnaka was boosted into a fight of epic proportions.

  “There were fifty of them…” Al-Scarab would start his story, and the number of perfidious Venetian assailants they’d been obliged to fight off had reached ten times that number by his tenth telling of the tale. Openmouthed and wide-eyed, his cousins listened spellbound, and never breathed a word about any of the inconsistencies that crept in. At least he didn’t throw in a sea monster, Ezio thought, drily.

  One thing that was not invention were the warnings that came from Al-Scarab’s family of the dangers Ezio would have to be prepared for in his onward journey. They tried hard to persuade him to take an armed escort with him, but this Ezio steadfastly declined to do. He would ride his own road. He would not subject others to the perils he knew he must face.

  Soon after his arrival at Acre, Ezio took the opportunity to write a long-overdue letter to his sister. He chose his words with care, conscious that this might be the last time he would ever communicate with her.

  Acre xx novembre MDX

  My dearest sister Claudia-

  I have been in Acre a week now, safe and in high spirits, but prepared for the worst. The men and women who have fed and sheltered me here also give me warning that the road to Masyaf is overrun by mercenaries and bandits not native to this land. What this could mean, I fear to guess.

  When I first set out from Roma ten months ago, I did so with a single purpose: to discover what our father could not. In the letter you know of, written the year before my birth, he makes a single mention of a library hidden beneath the floors of Altair’s former castle. A sanctum full of invaluable wisdom.

  But what will I find when I arrive? Who will greet me? A host of eager Templars, as I fear most strongly? Or nothing but the whistling of a cold and lonely wind? Masyaf has not been home to the Assassins for almost three hundred years now. Does it remember us? Are we still welcome?

  Ah, I am weary of this fight, Claudia… Weary not because I am tired but because our struggle seems to move in one direction only.. . toward chaos. Today I have more questions than answers. That is why I have come so far: to find clarity. To find the wisdom left behind by the Great Mentor, so that I may better understand the purpose of our fight and my place in it.

  Should anything happen to me, dear Claudia… should my skills fail me, or my ambition lead me astray, do not seek revenge or retribution in my memory but fight to continue the search for truth, so that all may benefit. My story is one of many thousands, and the world will suffer if it ends too soon.

  Your brother, Ezio Auditore da Firenze

  Al-Scarab, in the course of fitting out for his own new ventures, had also seen to it that Ezio had the attention of the best doctors, the best tailors, the best chefs, and the best women Acre could provide. His blades were honed and sharpened, his kit was fully cleaned, repaired, replaced where necessary, and thoroughly overhauled.

  As the day approached for Ezio to leave, Al-Scarab presented
him with two fine horses-“A present from my uncle-he breeds them-but I don’t have much use for them in my trade”-tough little Arabs, with soft leather tack and one fine, high-ended, tooled saddle. Ezio continued to refuse any escort but accepted supplies for his journey, which from now on would carry him overland, through what had once, long ago, been the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  And now the time of parting had come. The last leg in a long journey, and whether it would it be completed or not, Ezio had no way of telling. But for him there was only the journey. It had to be made. Old men ought to be explorers. At its end, he would see.

  “Go with your God, Ezio.”

  “ Barakallah feek, my friend,” Ezio replied, taking the big pirate’s hand.

  “We’ll meet again.”

  “Yes.”

  Both men wondered in their hearts if they were telling the truth, but the words comforted them. It didn’t matter. They looked each other in the eye and knew that in their different ways they were part of the same fellowship.

  Ezio mounted the larger of the two horses, the bay, and turned her head around.

  Without a backward glance, he headed out of the city, north.

  NINE

  Masyaf was two hundred miles-as the crow flies-away from Acre. The seemingly gentle desert land that lay between the two points was very far from gentle in fact. The great Ottoman outward thrust from its original core had been going on relentlessly for two hundred years, and had culminated in the taking of Constantinople by the twenty-year-old Sultan Mehmed II in 1453. But still the Turkish tentacles extended, reaching westward as far as Bulgaria and beyond, and south and east into Syria and what had once been the Holy Land. The eastern coastal strip of the White Sea, with its vital ports and its access by water westward, was a jewel in the crown, and the Ottoman grip on it was as yet fragile. Ezio was under no illusions about what battles he would have to face as he made his lonely way north. He followed the coast for most of the way, keeping the sparkling sea in view to his left, riding the high cliffs and the tattered scrublands that topped them, traveling in the hours of dawn and dusk, hiding for four hours when the sun was at its highest and resting again for four hours at night under the stars.

  Traveling alone had its advantages. He could blend in far more easily than would have been possible if he’d had an escort, and his keen eyes discerned danger points ahead well enough in advance either to skirt them or wait until they had passed. This was bandit country, where half-disciplined gangs of unemployed mercenaries roamed, killing travelers and each other for what they could get, surviving, as it seemed to Ezio, merely for the sake of it, in a countryside still reeling in the aftermath of centuries of war. Men turned feral and no longer thinking, no longer hoping or fearing; men who had lost any sense of conscience. Ruthless and reckless, and as callous as they were remorseless.

  Fights there were, when they could not be avoided, and every one of them pointless, leaving a few more dead for the vultures and the crows, which were the only creatures truly to thrive in this wasteland forgotten of God. Once, Ezio saved a frightened village from marauders, and once, a woman from torture, rape, and death. But for how long? And what would become of them after he had passed by? He was not God, he could not be everywhere; and here, where once Christ had trodden, God showed no evidence of looking after His own.

  The farther north he rode, the heavier Ezio’s heart became. Only the fire of the quest kept him on the path. But he tied brushwood to his horses’ tails to eradicate his tracks as he passed, and at night, he spread branches of thorn to rest on, so that he would never quite sleep. Eternal vigilance was not only the price of freedom but of survival. Though the passing years might have robbed him of some of his strength, that was compensated for by experience, and the fruit of the training which had been drummed into him by Paola and Mario so long ago in Florence and Monteriggioni had never rotted. Though Ezio sometimes felt that he couldn’t go on, that he wouldn’t go on, he went on.

  Two hundred miles as the crow flies. But this was a harsh winter, and there were many detours and delays along the road.

  Finally, Ezio saw the mountains rearing ahead of him.

  He drew in a deep breath of cold air.

  Masyaf was near.

  Three weeks later, on foot, both horses dead in the frozen passes behind him, and on his conscience, for they had been more stalwart and loyal companions than many men, Ezio stood in sight of his goal.

  An eagle soared, high in the hard, clear sky.

  Ezio, 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.

  Masyaf. After many 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, Ezio 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, coming from nowhere, whacked into his right shoulder, through the body armor there.

  TEN

  The dawn was cold and grey. In its stillness, Ezio roused himself from his memories and snapped all his concentration to the present as the heard the footfall of guards’ boots on the flagstones of the castle, approaching his cell. This was the moment.

  He’d pretend to be weak, and that wasn’t too hard a thing to do. He was thirstier than he’d been in a long time, and hungrier, but the beaker and the food still stood untouched on the table. He lay on the floor facedown, his hood pulled low over his face.

  He heard the door of his cell crash open, and the men came in. They reached under his shoulders and half lifted him, dragging him out and along the bare grey stone corridor outside. Looking down at the floor as he was dragged over it, Ezio saw marked on it, laid out in a darker stone, the great symbol of the Assassins, their insignia since time immemorial.

  The corridor gave way at length to a wider space, a kind of hall, open on one side. Ezio felt keen fresh air on his face, and it revived him. He raised his head slightly and saw that beyond him there were tall openings demarcated by narrow columns, and beyond them a wide-open view of the pitiless mountains. They were still high in the tower.

  They pulled him to his feet, and he shook himself free of them. They stood back slightly, halberds at the ready, lowered but pointing at him. Facing him, his back to the void, stood the captain of the day before. He held a noose in his hand.

  “You are a tenacious man, Ezio,” the captain said. “To come all this way for a glimpse inside Altair’s castle. It shows heart.”

  He gestured to his men to stand farther back, leaving Ezio standing alone. Then he went on: “But you’re an old hound now. Better to put you out of your misery than see you whimper to a sad end.”

  Ezio turned slightly to address the man directly. That tiny movement, he noted to his satisfaction, was enough to make the halberdiers flinch and steady their weapons on him.

  “Any last words before I kill you?” Ezio said.

  The captain was made of sterner stuff than his men. He stood firm. He laughed. “I wonder how long it will take for the buzzards to pick your bones clean, as your body dangles from these parapets?”

  “There’s an eagle up there somewhere. He’ll keep the buzzards away.”

  “A lot of good that’ll do you. Come forward. Or are you afraid to die? You wouldn’t want to have to be dragged to your death, would you?”

  Ezio moved forward slowly, every sense taut.

  “That’s good,” said the captain, and Ezio immediately sensed his slight relaxation. Did the man really thin
k he was giving in? Was he that vain? That stupid? If so, all the better. But perhaps, after all, this ugly man, who smelled of sweat and cooked meat, was right. The moment of death had to come sometime.

  Beyond the wide window between the columns, a narrow wooden platform projected over the void, perhaps ten feet long and four wide, constructed of six rough planks. It looked ancient and unsafe. The captain bowed in an ironic gesture of invitation. Ezio stepped forward again, waiting for his moment, but at the same time wondering if it would come.

  The planks creaked ominously under his weight, and the air was cold around him. He looked at the sky and the mountains. Then he saw the eagle coasting, fifty or one hundred feet below him, its white pinions spread, and somehow that gave him hope.

  Then something else happened.

  Ezio had noticed another similar platform, projecting from the tower at the same level some fifteen feet to his right. And now, on it, alone, walking fearlessly forward, was the young cowled man in white he had glimpsed in the battle. As Ezio watched, his breath suspended, the man seemed to be turning toward him, to be making the beginning of a gesture…

  And then, again, the vision faded, and there was nothing but the wind and the occasional scatter of gusting snow. Even the eagle had disappeared from sight.

  The captain approached, noose in hand. Ezio fleetingly noticed that there was plenty of slack in the rope that trailed behind it.

  “No eagle here that I can see,” said the captain. “I wager it’ll take the buzzards no more than three days.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Ezio replied, evenly.

  A knot of guards had come up behind the captain, but it was the captain himself, now standing close behind Ezio, who pulled down his hood, slipped the noose over his head, and pulled it tight around his neck.

  “Now!” said the captain.