Ezio hauled himself up onto the embankment as Templar guards hurried forward to rain blows down on him, but he fended them off long enough to get to his feet. Then he braced himself and faced them.
He sensed their fear again and took advantage of their momentary hesitation to attack first. He drew his scimitar firmly with his right hand and unleashed the hidden-blade beneath his left. In two swift strokes to right and left, he brought the nearest men down. The others circled, just out of reach, taking turns to make sudden stabs at him, like striking vipers, hoping to disorient him.
But their efforts weren’t sufficiently concerted. Ezio managed to drive his shoulder against one, pitching him into the pool. He sank almost immediately, its black waters cutting off his anguished cry for help. Swinging round and keeping low, Ezio hurled a fourth man over his back onto the granite. His helmet flew off and his skull cracked with a noise like a gunshot on the diamond-hard stone.
The surviving fifth man, a Templar corporal, barked a desperate order to the workman, but the workman did nothing, too petrified to move. Then, seeing Ezio turn on him, the corporal backed away, his mouth slavering, until the wall behind him arrested his retreat. Ezio approached, intending merely to knock the Templar unconscious, but then the corporal, who’d been waiting for his moment, struck a treacherous dagger blow toward Ezio’s groin. Ezio sidestepped and seized the man by the shoulder, near the throat.
“I would have spared you, friend. But you give me no choice.” With one swift stroke of his razor-sharp scimitar, Ezio severed the man’s head from his body. “Requiescat in Pace,” he said, softly.
Then he turned to the stonemason.
THIRTEEN
The man was about Ezio’s age, but running to fat and not in the greatest shape. At the moment, he was trembling like an outsize aspen.
“Don’t kill me, sir!” the man pleaded, cowering. “I’m a workingman, that’s all. Just some poor nobody with a family to look after.”
“Got a name?”
“Adad, sir.”
“What kind of work is it you do? For these people?” Ezio stooped to wipe his blades on the tunic of the dead corporal and sheathed them. Adad relaxed a fraction. He was still holding his hammer and chisel, and Ezio had kept a careful eye on them, but the stonemason seemed to have forgotten they were in his hands.
“Digging, mostly. Wretched hard work it is, too, sir. It’s taken me a year just to find this chamber alone.” Adad scanned Ezio’s face, but if he’d been looking for sympathy, he hadn’t found it. After a moment’s silence, he went on. “For the past three months, I’ve been trying to break through this door.”
Ezio turned away from the man and examined the door himself. “You haven’t made much progress,” he commented.
“I haven’t made a dent! This stone is harder than steel.”
Ezio ran a hand across the glass-smooth stone. The seriousness of his expression deepened. “I doubt if you ever will. This door guards objects more valuable than all the gold in the world.”
Now that the menace of death was past, the man’s eyes gleamed involuntarily “Ah! Do you mean—gemstones?”
Ezio regarded him mockingly. Then he turned his gaze to the door and examined it closely. “There are keyholes here. Five of them. Where are the keys?”
“They tell me little. But I know the Templars found one beneath the Ottoman sultan’s palace. As for the others, I suppose their little book will tell them.”
Ezio looked at him sharply. “Sultan Bayezid’s palace? And what is this book?”
The mason shrugged. “A journal of some kind, I think. That ugly captain, the one with the scarred face, he carries it with him wherever he goes.”
Ezio’s eyes narrowed. He thought fast. Then he appeared to relax, and, taking a small linen pouch from his tunic, he tossed it to Adad. It jingled as the man caught it.
“Go home,” said Ezio. “Find other work—with honest men.”
Adad looked pleased, then doubtful. “You don’t know how much I’d like to. I’d love to leave this place. But these men—they will murder me if I try.”
Ezio turned slightly, peering back up the chute behind him. A thin ray of light came down it.
He turned back to the mason. “Pack your tools,” he said. “You will have nothing to fear now.”
FOURTEEN
Sticking to the less-frequented stairways and corridors of the castle, Ezio regained the high battlements unseen, his breath pluming in the cold air. He made his way round them to a point that overlooked the village of Masyaf, crouching in the castle’s shadow. He knew there would be no way of leaving the castle by either of its heavily guarded gates, but he had to track down the scarred, shaven-headed captain. He guessed that the man would be outside, supervising the search for the escaped Assassin. Templars would be scouring the countryside, which explained the relative absence of men within the confines of the fortress. In any case, Ezio knew that the next step in his mission lay beyond Masyaf’s walls. But first he had to leave the place.
Once he had a clear view of the village, he could see that Templar guards were making their rounds of it, interrogating its inhabitants. Making sure that the sun was at his back, obscuring any clear view of him from below, he unstrapped his bags and took out the parachute, unfolding it and erecting it with as much speed as care would allow, for his life would depend on it. The distance was too far and the descent too dangerous for even the most daring Leap of Faith.
The parachute took the form of a triangular tent, or pyramid, of strong silk, held in place by struts of thin steel. Ezio attached the rope from each of its four corners to a quick-release harness, which he buckled round his chest, then, pausing to gauge the wind and to ensure that no one below was looking up, hurled himself into the air.
It would have been an exhilarating feeling if Ezio had had the leisure to enjoy it, but he concentrated on guiding the device, using the convection currents and thermals as best he could, imitating an eagle, and brought himself to a safe landing a dozen yards from the nearest building. Swiftly stowing the parachute, he made his way into the village.
Sure enough, the Templars were busy harassing the villagers, pushing them around and beating them without mercy if they showed the slightest sign of not answering clearly and instantly. Ezio blended in with the people of the village, listening and watching.
One old man was pleading for mercy as a Templar bravo stood over his cowering form. “Help me, please!” he begged anyone who would listen, but no one was.
“Speak, dog!” the Templar shouted. “Where is he?” Elsewhere, a younger man was being beaten by two thugs even as he implored them to stay their hand. Another cried, “I am innocent!” as he was clubbed to the ground.
“Where is he hiding?” snarled his assailants.
It wasn’t only the men who were being cruelly handled. Two other Templar cowards held down a woman as a third kicked her mercilessly, stifling her cries as she writhed on the ground, piteously beseeching them to stop: “I know nothing! Please forgive me!”
“Bring us the Assassin, and no further harm will come to you,” sneered her tormentor, bringing his face close to hers. “Otherwise . . .”
Ezio watched, aching to assist but forcing himself to concentrate on his search for the captain. He arrived at the front gate of the village just in time to see the object of his search mounting a horse-drawn wagon. The captain was in such a hurry to be gone that he flung the driver out of his seat, onto the ground.
“Get out of my way!” he bellowed. “Fíye apó brostá mou!”
Seizing the reins, the captain glared around him at his troops. “None of you leave until the Assassin is dead,” he snarled. “Do you understand? Find him!”
He’d been speaking Greek, Ezio registered. Formerly, Ezio had mostly heard Italian and Arabic. Could the captain, at least, be a Byzantine, among this Templar crew? A descendant of those driven into exile when Constantinople fell to the sword of Sultan Mehmed, sixty-five years ago? Ezio knew
that the exiles had established themselves in the Peloponnese soon afterward, but, even after they’d been overrun there by the triumphant Ottomans, pockets still survived in Asia Minor and the Near East.
He stepped forward, into the open.
The soldiers looked at him nervously.
“Sir!” said one of the bolder sergeants. “He seems to have found us.”
For reply, the captain seized the whip from its socket by the driver’s seat and lashed his horses forward, yelling, “Go! Go!” Ezio, seeing this, exploded into a run. Templar troops tried to impede him, but, drawing his scimitar, he cut his way impatiently through them. Making a dive for the fast-disappearing wagon, he just missed gaining a hold on it but managed to seize a trailing rope instead. The wagon checked for an instant, then surged forward, dragging Ezio with it.
Painfully, Ezio started to haul himself hand over hand up the rope toward the wagon, while behind him he heard the noise of thundering hooves. A couple of soldiers had mounted horses themselves and were hot on his heels, swords raised, striving to get close enough to cut him down. As they rode, they screamed warnings to the captain, who lashed his own horses into an even more furious gallop. Meanwhile, another, lighter wagon had set off in pursuit and was swiftly drawing level.
Crashing across the rough terrain, Ezio continued to haul himself up the rope. He was within two feet of the wagon’s tailgate when the two riders behind him closed in. He ducked his head, waiting for a blow, but the horsemen had been too hasty, and concentrated more on their quarry than their riding. Their mounts collided sickeningly inches behind Ezio’s heels, and fell, in a pandemonium of screaming horses, cursing riders, and dust.
Straining hard, Ezio forced his aching arms to make one final effort, and, breathing heavily, he wrenched, rather than pulled, himself the last foot onto the wagon, where he clung for a moment, motionless, his head swimming, catching his breath.
Meanwhile, the second wagon had drawn abreast of the first, and the captain was frantically signaling the men aboard to bring it in closer. But as soon as they had done so, the captain leapt from his wagon to theirs, pushing its driver from his seat. With a dull cry, the man fell to the ground from the speeding vehicle, hitting a rock and ricocheting off it with an appalling thud, before lying inert, his head twisted round at an unnatural angle.
Gaining control of the plunging horses, the captain raced forward and away, as Ezio, in his turn, scrambled to the front of the wagon he was on and seized the reins, his arm muscles yelling in protest as he hauled on them to steady his own team. His two horses, foam-flecked and wild-eyed, blood gathering at the bits in their mouths, nevertheless kept up their gallop, and Ezio remained in the chase. Seeing this, the captain steered toward an old open gate across the road, supported by crumbling brick columns. He managed to sideswipe one of these without hindering his onward rush, and the column smashed down in a welter of masonry, directly in front of Ezio. Ezio heaved at the reins, drawing his team to the right in the nick of time, and his wagon bumped and crashed off the road into the scrubland at its edge as he struggled to bring his horses back around to the left, to regain the beaten track. Dust and small stones flew everywhere, cutting Ezio’s cheeks and making him squeeze his eyes into slits to protect them and keep focused on his quarry.
“Go to hell, damn you!” screeched the captain over his shoulder. And now Ezio could see that the soldiers hanging on precariously in the back of the first wagon were preparing bombs to hurl at him.
Zigzagging as best he could to avoid the explosions, which went off on both sides of him and behind him, Ezio fought hard to keep control of his terrified and, by now, all-but-stampeding team. But the bombs had failed to find their mark, and he kept on track.
The captain tried a different tactic and a dangerous one.
He suddenly slowed, falling back, so that Ezio, before he could make a countermove, drew level. Immediately, the captain caused his team to swerve so that his wagon crashed broadside into Ezio’s.
Ezio could see the whites of the captain’s half-crazed eyes, the scar livid across his strained face, as they glared at each other through the swirling air.
“Die, you bastard!” yelled the captain.
Then he glanced ahead. Ezio followed his gaze and saw, up ahead, a guard tower and, beyond it, another village. This village was larger than the one at Masyaf and partially fortified. An outlying Templar stronghold.
The captain managed to coax one more burst of speed from his horses, and as he drew away with a cry of triumph, his men threw two more bombs. This time one of them exploded beneath the left-hand rear wheel of Ezio’s wagon. The blast threw the vehicle halfway into the air, and Ezio was thrown clear as his horses made sounds like banshees and plunged away off into the scrubland, dragging the remains of the ruined wagon behind them. The land fell away sharply to the right of the road, and Ezio was pitched twenty feet down into a gully, where a large outcrop of thorny shrubs broke his fall and hid him.
He lay prone, looking at the unforgiving grey ground inches from his face, unable to move, unable to think, but feeling that every bone in his body had been broken. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.
FIFTEEN
Ezio heard voices, far away, as he lay in a kind of dream. He thought he saw the young man in white again, the man whom he’d seen at the time of the ambush and again when he was on the makeshift scaffold, but he couldn’t be sure. Who had neither helped nor hindered him, but who seemed to be on his side. Others came and went: his long-dead brothers, Federico and Petruccio; Claudia; his father and mother; and—unbidden and unwanted—the beautiful, cruel face of Caterina Sforza.
The visions faded, but the voices remained, stronger now, as his other senses returned to him. He tasted soil in his mouth and smelled the earth against which his cheek lay. The aches and pains in his body returned, too. He thought he’d never be able to move again.
The voices were indistinct, coming from above. He imagined the Templars were leaning over the edge of the little cliff he’d fallen down but realized that they couldn’t see him. The thick shrubs must be concealing his body.
He waited awhile, until the voices finally receded, and silence fell. Then, tentatively, he flexed his hands and feet, then his arms and legs, as, gratefully, he spat out the dirt.
Nothing seemed to be broken. Slowly, painfully, he wormed his way out of the bushes and got to his feet. Then, cautiously, and keeping to what cover there was, he clambered back to the road.
He was just in time to see the Templar captain passing through the gate in the walls of the fortified village, a couple of hundred yards away. Keeping to the side of the road where bushes grew and he could conceal himself, he brushed himself off and started to walk toward the village, but it seemed as if every muscle in him protested.
“This used to be so easy,” he murmured to himself, ruefully. But he willed himself onward and, skirting the wall, found a likely place to climb it.
Having stuck his head over the parapet to check that he was unobserved, he pulled himself over and dropped into the village. He found himself in the stockyard, empty except for a pair of heifers which shunted off to one side, eyeing him warily. He took time to wait, in case there were dogs, but after a minute, he passed through the wicket of the stockyard and, following the sound of raised voices, made his way through the apparently deserted village toward them. Nearing the village square, he caught sight of the captain and stepped out of sight behind a shed. The captain, standing on the top of a low tower at one corner of the square, was berating two unhappy sergeants. Beyond them, the assembled villagers stood mutely by. The captain’s words were punctuated by the chop-chop of a waterwheel on the other side, worked by the rivulet that ran through the village.
“I seem to be the only one around here who knows how to handle a horse,” the captain was saying. “Until we’re sure he’s dead this time, I command you not to drop your guard for a moment. Do you understand?”
“Yessir,” the men answe
red sullenly.
“How many times have you failed to kill that man, hmn?” the captain continued angrily. “Listen up and listen close: If I do not see his head rolling in the dust at my feet within the hour, yours will take its place!”
The captain fell silent and, turning, watched the road from his vantage point. Ezio could see that he was nervous. He fiddled with the cocking lever of his crossbow.
Ezio had made his way into the crowd of villagers during the captain’s tirade, blending in with them as best he could, which, given his battered and downtrodden appearance, wasn’t difficult. But the crowd was breaking up, returning to work. The mood among the people was nervous, and when a man in front of him suddenly stumbled, jostling another, the second turned on him irritably, snapping: “Hey, get out of my way—get a move on!”
His attention caught by the disturbance, the captain scanned the crowd, and in an instant his eye caught Ezio’s.
“You!” he shouted. In another moment he had cocked his bow, fitted a bolt, and fired.
Ezio dodged it adroitly, and it flew past him, to embed itself in the arm of the man who’d snapped.
“Aiëë!” he yelped, clutching his shattered biceps.
Ezio darted for cover as the captain reloaded.
“You will not leave this place alive!” the captain bawled, firing again. This time, the bolt stuck harmlessly in a wooden doorframe, which Ezio had ducked behind. But there was very little wrong with the captain’s shooting. So far, Ezio had been lucky. He had to get away, and fast. Two more bolts sang past him.
Revelations Page 7
