Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (7 page)

“That’s not a matchlock,” said the armorer keenly.

“It’s a wheel lock,” said Cesare. “You’re clearly no fool,” he added, addressing the armorer. “It is much more predictable and efficient than the old guns. Leonardo designed it for me. Reloads fast, too. Would you like a demonstration?”

“Indeed!” the armorer replied, his professional interest overcoming any other instinct.

“By all means,” said Cesare, leveling the pistol at him and shooting him dead. “Reload, please,” he continued, passing the gun to General Valois and producing its twin from his belt. “We’ve had so much bloodshed,” he went on. “So it’s distressing to reflect that a little more cleansing is still in order. Never mind. Ezio, I’d like you to take this in the spirit it’s meant—from my family to yours.”

Stooping slightly and placing one foot in the center of Mario’s back, he drew the Bilbao sword out, letting the blood ooze forth. Mario’s eyes went wide with pain as he struggled instinctively to crawl away, toward his nephew.

Cesare leaned forward and fired the pistol at point-blank range into the back of Mario’s cranium, which burst apart.

“No!” shouted Ezio. In an instant the recollection of the brutal murder of his father and brothers flashed through his mind. “No!” He lunged toward Cesare, the agony of loss surging through him uncontrollably. Mario’s body slumped to the ground.

As Ezio leapt forward, General Valois, having reloaded the first gun, shot him in the shoulder. Ezio staggered back, choking, and the world went black.

When Ezio came to, the tide of battle had turned again, and the attackers were chased back outside the walls of the citadel. He found himself being dragged to safety as the defenders of the
rocca
, who had retaken it, closed the broken gate with a barricade, gathered all the remaining citizens of Monteriggioni within its walls, and were now organizing their escape to the countryside beyond, for there was no knowing how long they could hold out against the determined forces of the Borgia, whose strength seemed limitless.

All this Ezio learned from the grizzled master-sergeant as he was recovering.

“Stay still, my lord.”

“Where am I?”

“On a stretcher. We’re taking you to the Sanctuary. The inner sanctum. No one will reach there.”

“Put me down. I can walk!”

“We have to dress that wound.”

Ezio, ignoring him, shouted an order at the stretcher bearers. But when he stood up, his head reeled.

“I cannot fight like this.”

“Oh, God, here they come again,” bellowed the sergeant as a siege tower crashed into the upper crenellations of the citadel, disgorging yet another fresh troop of Borgia soldiers.

Ezio turned to face them, his head slowly clearing from the darkness, his steely self-control overcoming the searing pain of the gunshot wound. But his shoulder was so damaged that he could not raise his sword. Assassin
condottieri
quickly surrounded him and fought off Cesare’s men. They managed to beat a retreat with very few casualties, but as they made their way back into the inner vastness of the castle Claudia shouted from a doorway, eager to hear of her brother’s well-being. As she stepped into the open, a Borgia captain rushed toward her—bloodied sword in his hand. Ezio looked on in horror, but recovered his composure enough to yell to his men. Two Assassin fighters ran toward Ezio’s sister—only just managing to put themselves between her and the flashing blade of the Borgia murderer. Sparks shot from the contact of the three blades—both Assassins raising their own swords simultaneously to block the killing blow. Claudia stumbled to the ground—her mouth open in a silent scream. The stronger of the Assassin soldiers, the master-sergeant, pushed the enemy’s sword skyward—locking the hilts at the hand guards—as the other Assassin pulled back his blade and stabbed forward into the guts of the Borgia captain. Claudia regained her composure and rose slowly to her feet. Safely in the fold of the Assassin troop, she rushed toward Ezio, ripping a strip of cotton from her skirts and pressing it to his shoulder, the white cloth quickly blooming with red from the wound.

“Shit! Don’t take risks like that!” Ezio told her, thanking the sergeant as his men pushed the enemy back, hurling some from the high battlements, while others fled.

“We must get you inside the Sanctuary,” cried Claudia. “Come
on!
”

Ezio allowed himself to be carried again—he had lost a lot of blood. In the meantime, the remaining citizens of the town who had not yet been able to escape crowded around them. Monteriggioni itself was deserted now—under the complete control of the Borgia force. Only the citadel remained in Assassin hands.

But now they had reached their goal—the cavernous fortified room beneath the castle below its northern wall, linked to the main building by a secret passage leading off Mario’s library. But only in the nick of time. One of their men, Paganino, one of the Venetian thieves once under Antonio de Magianis’s control, was in the act of closing the secret door to the stairwell as the last fugitives passed through it.

“We thought you had been killed,
Ser
Ezio!” he cried.

“They haven’t got me yet,” returned Ezio grimly.

“I don’t know what to do. Where does this passage lead?”

“To the north, outside the walls.”

“So it’s true. We always thought it was a legend.”

“Well, now you know better,” said Ezio, looking at the man and wondering if, in the heat of the moment, he had said too much to a man he knew little of. He ordered his sergeant to close the door, but at the last moment, Paganino slipped through it, back to the main building.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to help the defenders. Don’t worry, I’ll lead them back this way.”

“I must bolt this door behind us. If you don’t come now, you are on your own.”

“I’ll manage, sir. I always do.”

“Then go with God. I must ensure the safety of these people.”

Ezio took stock of the crowd gathered in the Sanctuary. In the gloom he could make out, among the rest of the fugitives, the features of not only Claudia, but his mother. He breathed an inward sigh of relief.

“There is no time to be lost,” he told them, jamming the door shut behind him with a sizable iron bar.

Quickly, his mother and sister dressed and bandaged his wound properly and got him to his feet, as Ezio directed the master-sergeant to twist the hidden lever built into the statue of the Master Assassin, Leonius, which stood by the side of the giant chimneypiece at the center of the northern wall of the Sanctuary. The concealed door swung open, revealing the corridor through which the people could escape to the safety of the countryside half a mile beyond the city limits.

Claudia and Maria stood by the entrance, shepherding townsfolk through it. The master-sergeant had gone ahead with a platoon, bearing torches, to guide and protect the refugees as they made their escape.

“Hurry!”
Ezio urged the citizens as they rushed into the dark maw of the tunnel. “Don’t panic! Be quick but don’t run! We don’t want a stampede in the tunnel.”

“And what of us? What of Mario?” asked his mother.

“Mario—how can I tell you this?—Mario has been killed. I want you and Claudia to make your way home to Florence.”

“Mario dead?” cried Maria.

“What is there in Florence for us?” asked Claudia.

Ezio spread his hands. “Our home. Lorenzo de’ Medici and his son undertook to restore the Auditore mansion to us, and they were as good as their word. Now the city is in the control of the Signoria again, and I know that Governor Soderini watches over it well. Go home. Put yourselves in the care of Paola and Annetta. I will join you as soon as I can.”

“Are you sure? The news we’ve heard about our old house is very different.
Messer
Soderini was too late to save it. In any case, we want to stay with you. To help you!”

The last remaining townspeople were filing into the dark tunnel now. As they did so, a great hammering and the crashing of blows fell on the door that divided the Sanctuary from the outside world.

“What is that?”

“It’s the Borgia troops! Make haste! Make haste!”

He ushered his family into the tunnel after the last remaining citizens, bringing up the rear with the few surviving Assassin troops.

It was a tough haul through the tunnel, and halfway along Ezio heard the crash as the Borgia men broke through the door into the Sanctuary. Soon they would be in the tunnel itself. He urged his charges forward, shouting at the stragglers to hurry. Then he heard the stamping of armed soldiers running down the tunnel behind them. The group rushed past a gateway that ended one section of the passage. Ezio grabbed at a lever on the wall beside the gateway—and just as the last of the Assassin fugitives rushed through he yanked hard, releasing the portcullis gate. As it came crashing down, the first of the pursuers caught up—only to be pinned to the floor by the heavy ironwork of the gate. His screams of agony filled the passage. Ezio had already run on—knowing that he’d bought his people precious time to make good their escape.

After what seemed like hours but could only have been minutes, the passage seemed to change incline—leveling out and then rising slightly. The air seemed less stale—they were nearly out. Just at that moment, they all heard a heavy rumbling of sustained cannon fire—the Borgia must be unleashing their firepower at the citadel, a final act of desecration. The passage shook—eddies of dust fell from the ceiling, and a sound like cracking ice could be heard, quiet at first but getting ominously louder.

“
Dio, ti prego, salvaci
—the roof is coming down!” sobbed one of the townswomen. The others began to scream—the fear of being buried alive flooding through the crowd.

Suddenly the roof of the tunnel seemed to open up and a torrent of rubble came cascading down. The fugitives rushed forward trying to escape from the falling rock, but Claudia reacted too slowly—she disappeared in a cloud of dust. Ezio wheeled around in alarm—hearing his sister scream, but unable to see her. “Claudia!” he shouted, panic in his voice.

“Ezio!” came a shout back, and as the dust cleared, Ezio’s sister picked her way carefully across the debris.

“Thank God you’re OK—did anything fall on you?” he asked.

“No, I’m OK. Is Mother OK?”

“I’m fine,” answered Maria.

They dusted themselves down, thanking the gods that they had survived this far, and made their way along the final stretch of the escape passage. At last they broke out into the open air. Never had grass, and the earth itself, smelled sweeter.

The mouth of the tunnel was separated from the countryside by a series of rope bridges swung across ravines. It had been designed like this by Mario as part of a master escape plan. Monteriggioni itself would survive the Borgia desecration—once the Borgia had razed it, it would be of no further interest to them. Ezio would return in time and rebuild it. Once again it would be the proud stronghold of the Assassins. Of that Ezio was certain. And it would be more than that. It would be a monument to his noble uncle, so pitilessly slain, Ezio promised himself.

He had had enough of the depredations wrought on his family by pointless villainy.

Ezio planned to cut the bridges down behind them as they fled, but they were shepherding elderly and wounded stragglers, and at his back he heard the yells and footsteps of their pursuers approaching rapidly. He was scarcely able to carry anyone on his back, but he managed to haul a woman whose leg had given out onto his good shoulder and staggered forward across the first rope bridge. It swung dangerously under their weight.

“Come on!” he yelled, encouraging his rear guard, who were already engaging with the Borgia soldiers. He waited on the far side until the last of his own men had reached the safety of the rocks. His men ran from the bridge—but a couple of Borgia soldiers had also made it across. Ezio stepped across their path and, using his good arm to wield his sword, engaged the enemy. Even hampered by his wound, Ezio was more than a match for the Borgia men—his sword parried their attacks with a blur of steel, taking on both blades at once. Stepping to one side, he crouched low under a wild swing from one of the men and used his own weapon to slice at the knee joint of the man’s leg armor. The man toppled—his left leg useless. The other attacker lunged down, thinking Ezio off balance, but Ezio rolled aside and the blade clanged off the rocks, sending shards of rock skittering into the ravine. The man winced as the blow vibrated along his sword, jarring the bones of his hand and arm. Ezio saw his chance and, heaving himself upright, brought his sword above his foe’s lowered arm and across the man’s face. The man went down—and in a single fluid movement Ezio brought his blade to bear on the ropes supporting the bridge. They severed instantly, the tension sending the ropes pinging violently backward across the ravine. The bridge concertinaed away from the rocks, and the Borgia men who had begun to cross fell screaming into the abyss below.

Turning back, on the other side Ezio saw Cesare. Next to him was Caterina, still in chains, and held by a vicious-looking Lucrezia. Juan Borgia, the deathly pale Micheletto, and the sweaty Frenchman, General Valois, stood by them. Leonardo was nowhere to be seen—but how could he have sided with such scum? Surely there must be a threat hanging over him. Ezio couldn’t believe that Leo would voluntarily stoop so low.

Cesare was waving something at Ezio.

“Yours next!” he screamed in fury.

Ezio could see that it was his uncle’s head.

There was only one place for Ezio to go now. The way forward for Cesare’s troops was cut off—it’d take them days to work around the ravines and catch up with Ezio’s survivors. He directed them to towns out of Borgia control, at least for the moment—to Siena, to San Gimignano, to Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia, and Florence. They’d find sanctuary there, and he had tried to impress upon his mother and sister the wisdom of returning to the safety of Florence themselves, whatever had happened to the Villa Auditore—despite the sad memories the city held, and despite the fact that both were seized with a compulsive desire to avenge Mario’s death.