Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

by Oliver Bowden

  “You must hunt them down!” he was saying, grasping the arms of his chair tightly in an effort to stay upright.

  “They are everywhere and nowhere at once!” declared one, bolder than the rest, helplessly.

  “I don’t care how you do it—just do it!”

  “We cannot,signore—without your guidance. The Assassins have regrouped. With the French gone, or in disarray, our own forces are scarcely able to match them. They have spies everywhere—our own network is no longer able to root them out! And Ezio Auditore has turned vast numbers of the citizenry to his cause.”

  “I am ill,idioti! I depend on your initiative!” Cesare sighed, falling back in his chair. “I was damned nearly killed! But I still have teeth!”

  “Sir—”

  “Just hold them at bay, if that’s the best you can do!” Cesare paused to catch his breath, and Dr. Torella mopped the man’s brow with a lint cloth soaked in vinegar or some other strong-smelling astringent, muttering soothingly to his patient as he did so. “Soon,” Cesare continued. “Soon, Micheletto will reach Rome with my own forces from Romagna and the north, and then you will see how quickly the Assassins will crumble into dust!”

  Ezio stepped forth and revealed the bag containing the Apple. “You delude yourself, Cesare!” he said in a loud voice. A voice of true authority.

  Cesare started from his chair, fear in his eyes. “You! How many lives do you have, Ezio? But this time you will surely die! Call the guard! Now!” he bellowed at his officers as he allowed his doctor to hurry him from the room to safety through an inner door.

  Lightning fast, one of the officers made for the door to raise the alarm. The others drew pistols and leveled them at Ezio, who just as swiftly withdrew the Apple from its bag and held it aloft, concentrating hard and pulling the hood of his tunic down low to shield his eyes.

  The Apple began to pulsate and glow, and the glow turned to an incandescence that gave out no heat but was as bright as the sun. The room turned white.

  “What sorcery is this?” shouted one of the officers, firing wildly. By chance his ball hit the Apple, but it had no more effect on it than a handful of dust.

  “Truly, this man has God Himself on his side!” another bawled, vainly trying to shield his eyes and staggering blindly in what he thought was the direction of the door.

  The light increased. The officers blundered up against the table, covering their eyes with their hands.

  “What’s happening?”

  “How is this possible?”

  “Do not smite me, Lord!”

  “I cannotsee!”

  His lips pressed together in concentration, Ezio continued to project his will through the Apple, but even he dared not look up from under the protecting peak of his cowl. He had to judge the moment to cease. When he did so, a wave of exhaustion hit him as the Apple, invisible within its own light, suddenly, with no afterglow, went dead. There was no sound in the room. Cautiously, Ezio lifted his hood and saw that the room was as before. The candles on the table cast a pool of light at the center of the gloom. They burned on, almost reassuringly, as if nothing had happened. Their flames were steady, as there was not the hint of a breeze.

  The tapestry on the arras was bleached of all its color.

  All the officers lay dead around the table, save the one who had first been making for the door, and he was slumped against it, his hand still on the latch. Ezio went over to him. He had to move him aside in order to leave.

  As he rolled the man over, he inadvertently looked into his eyes.

  He wished he hadn’t—it was a sight he would never forget.

  “Requiescat in pace,” said Ezio, acknowledging the chill realization that the Apple indeed had powers that, if unleashed beyond check, could control the minds of men; could open up undreamed-of possibilities, and worlds.

  And wreak destruction so terrible as to be beyond the power of imagination itself.

  FORTY-SIX

  The conclave was undecided. Despite the efforts of Cardinal della Rovere to outwit him, Cesare clearly still had enough clout to hold him in check. Fear, or self-interest, kept the cardinals wavering. Machiavelli guessed what they were trying to do—they would find a candidate to elect who would, perhaps, not last long, but who would be acceptable to all parties. An interim Pope—a caretaker, until the balance of power resolved itself.

  Bearing this in mind, Ezio was pleased when, after weeks of deadlock, Claudia brought news to Tiber Island.

  “The Cardinal of Rouen, a Frenchman, Georges d’Amboise, has revealed under…duress…that Cesare has planned a meeting with Templar loyalists in the countryside, outside Rome. The cardinal himself attends.”

  “When is it?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “The location is to be kept secret until the last minute.”

  “Then I will go to the cardinal’s residence and follow him when he leaves.”

  “They have elected a new Pope,” said Machiavelli, coming in hurriedly. “Your pet French cardinal, Claudia, will take the news to Cesare tonight. In fact, a small delegation of them, still friendly to the Borgia, is going with him.”

  “Who is the new Pope?” asked Ezio.

  Machiavelli smiled. “It is as I thought,” he said. “Cardinal Piccolomini. Not an old man, he’s sixty-four, but he’s in poor health. He’s chosen to be known as Pius III.”

  “Whom does he support?”

  “We don’t know yet, but all the foreign ambassadors put pressure on Cesare to leave Rome during the election. Della Rovere is furious, but he knows how to wait.”

  Ezio spent the rest of the day in consultation with Bartolomeo, and between them they put together a combined force of recruits andcondottieri strong enough for any battle that might ensue with Cesare.

  “Turns out just as well you didn’t kill Cesare back at his palazzo,” said Bartolomeo. “This way, he’ll draw all his supporters to him and we can smash the fuckin’ guts out of ’em.” He looked at Ezio. “Got to hand it to you, my friend. You might almost have planned it this way.”

  Ezio smiled. He went back to his lodgings, where he strapped on his pistol and put the double-blade into the wallet on his belt.

  With a small group of handpicked men, Ezio made up the advance guard, leaving the rest to follow some way behind. When the Cardinal of Rouen rode out in the late afternoon with his fellows and their entourage, Ezio and his horsemen followed at a safe distance. They did not have a long ride, as they expected, and the cardinal stopped at a large country estate whose mansion was set behind fortified walls near the shores of Lake Bracciano.

  Ezio, alone, scaled the walls and shadowed the delegation of cardinals as it made its way to the great hall of the mansion, blending in with the Borgia’s hundred or so leading officers, though there were many other people present, from other lands, whom Ezio did not recognize but knew must be members of the Templar Order. Cesare, fully recovered now, stood on a raised dais in the center of the crowded hall. Torches flickered in their sconces on the stone walls, making shadows leap and giving the congress more the air of a witches’ coven than a gathering of military forces.

  Outside, Borgia soldiers were drawn up in numbers that surprised Ezio, who had not forgotten Cesare’s remark about Micheletto bringing his remaining troops out of the provinces to back him up. He was worried that even with Bartolomeo’s men and his own recruits, who had drawn up a couple of hundred yards from the mansion, they might find their match in this assembly. But it was too late now.

  Ezio watched as a pathway was made between the serried ranks in the hall to allow the cardinals to approach the dais.

  “Join me! And I will take back Rome for us!” Cesare was declaiming as the Cardinal of Rouen, their spokesman, made his appearance with his fellow prelates. Seeing them, Cesare broke off.

  “What news of the conclave?” he demanded.

  The Cardinal of Rouen hesitated. “Good news—and bad,” he said.

  “Spit
it out!”

  “We have elected Piccolomini.”

  Cesare considered this. “Well, at least it isn’t that fisherman’s son, della Rovere!” Then he turned on the cardinal. “But it’s still not the man I wanted! I wanted a puppet! Piccolomini may have one foot in the grave, but he can still do me a lot of damage. I paid for your appointment! Is this how you thank me?”

  “Della Rovere is a powerful foe!” The cardinal hesitated again. “And Rome is not what it once was. Borgia money has become tainted!”

  Cesare looked at him coldly. “You will regret this decision,” he said frostily.

  The cardinal bowed his head and turned to go, but as he did so, he spotted Ezio, who had made his way forward in order to see more clearly.

  “It’s the Assassin!” he yelled. “His sister put me to the question! That’s how he got here! Run! He’ll kill us all!”

  The cardinals, as one man, took to their heels amid a general panic. Ezio followed them and, once outside, fired his pistol. The sound carried to his advance guard, posted just outside the walls, and they in turn fired muskets as signal to Bartolomeo to attack. They arrived just as the gates in the walls were opened to allow the fleeing cardinals to depart. The defenders had no time to close them before being overpowered by the advance guard, who managed to hold the gate until Bartolomeo, whirling Bianca above his head and roaring his war cry, came up with the main Assassin force. Ezio fired his second shot into the belly of a Borgia guard who came screaming up, flailing a wicked-looking mace, but he had no time to reload. In any case, for close fighting, the double-blade was the perfect weapon. Finding an alcove in the wall, he took shelter in it and, with practiced hands, exchanged the pistol for the blade. Then he rushed back into the hall, looking for Cesare.

  The battle in the mansion and the area within its encircling walls was short and bloody. The Borgia and Templar troops were unprepared for an attack of this magnitude, and they were trapped within the walls. They fought hard, and many acondottiero and Assassin recruit lay dead by the time it was over. The Assassins had the advantage of being already mounted, and few of the Borgia faction could get to their own horses before they were cut down.

  It was late by the time the dust had settled. Ezio, bleeding from a flesh wound in his chest, had laid about him so furiously with the double-blade that it had sliced through his own glove and cut his hand deeply. Around him lay a host of bodies, half, perhaps, of the assembly—those who had not been able to flee and ride off south, into the night.

  But Cesare was not among them. Cesare, too, had fled.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Much occurred in the weeks that followed. The Assassins sought Cesare frantically, but in vain. He did not return to Rome, and indeed Romeseemed purged of all Borgia and Templar influence, though Ezio and his companions remained on the alert, knowing that as long as the enemy lived, there was danger. They suspected there were still pockets of die-hard loyalists, just waiting for the signal.

  And the Vatican was rocked once more. Pius III was a bookish and deeply religious man. After a reign of only twenty-six days, his already frail health succumbed to the extra pressures and responsibilities the Papacy placed on it, and, in October, he died. But he had not, as Ezio had feared, proved to be a puppet of the Borgia. Rather, during the short span of his supremacy, he set in motion reforms within the College of Cardinals that swept away all the corruption and sensuality fomented by his predecessor. There would be no more selling of cardinalates for money, and no more accepting of payments in order to let well-off murderers escape the gallows. Alexander VI’s pragmatic doctrine, “Let them live in order to repent,” no longer held currency.

  And he had issued a warrant throughout the Papal States for the arrest of Cesare Borgia.

  His successor was elected immediately and by an overwhelming majority. Only three cardinals opposed him, and one of them was Georges d’Amboise, the Cardinal of Rouen, who vainly hoped to gain the triple tiara for the French. Following the check in his career caused by the election of Pius, Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of San Pietro in Vincoli, had wasted no time in consolidating his supporters and assuring himself of the Papacy at the next opportunity, which he knew would come soon.

  Julius II, as he styled himself, was tough man of sixty, still vigorous, as much in his arms and loins as in his brain. He was a man of great energy, as Ezio would soon learn, a political intriguer and a warrior, and proud of his humble origins as the descendant of fishermen—for had not Saint Peter himself been a fisherman?

  But the Borgia threat still cast its shadow.

  “If only Cesare would show himself,” growled Bartolomeo as he and Ezio sat in conference in the map-room of his barracks.

  “He will. But only when he’s ready.”

  “My spies tell me that he plans to gather his best men to attack Rome through one of its principal gates.”

  Ezio considered this. “If Cesare’s coming from the north, as seems almost certain, he’ll try to get in by the gate near the Castra Praetoria. He might even try to retake the Castra itself. It’s in a strong strategic position.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Ezio stood. “Gather the Assassins. We’ll face Cesare together.”

  “And if we cannot?”

  “That’s fine talk from you, Barto! If we can’t, I will face him alone.”

  They parted company, arranging to meet in Rome later in the day. If there was going to be an attack, the Holy City would be ready for it.

  And Ezio’s hunch proved right. He’d told Bartolomeo to summon the others to a church piazza near the Castra. All of them arrived, and they made their way to the northern gate, already heavily defended, as Julius II had shown himself perfectly happy to accept Ezio’s advice. But the sight that met their eyes, a couple of hundred yards’ distant, was a sobering one. There was Cesare, on a pale horse, surrounded by a group of officers wearing the uniform of his own private army, and behind him was at least a battalion of his own troops.

  Even at that distance, Ezio’s keen ears could pick out Cesare’s bombast—the odd thing was, why did anyone fall for it? At least, why do so still?

  “All of Italy shall be united, and you will rule at my side!” Cesare was proclaiming. Then he turned and spotted Ezio and his fellow Assassins ranged along the ramparts of the gate.

  He rode a little closer, though not close enough to be within crossbow or musket range. But he was alone.

  “Come to watch my triumph?” he shouted up at them. “Don’t worry. This isn’t all my strength. Soon, Micheletto will arrive with my armies! But you will all be dead by then! I have enough men to deal with you!”

  Ezio looked at him; then, turning, he looked down at the mass of papal troops, Assassin recruits, andcondottieri ranged beneath him on the inside of the gate. He raised a hand, and the gatekeepers drew back the wooden staves that kept the gates shut. They stood ready to open them at his next signal. Ezio kept his hand raised.

  “My men will never fail me!” cried Cesare. “They know what awaits them if they do! Soon—soon!—you will pass from this Earth, and my dominions will return to me!”

  Ezio thought,The New Disease has affected the balance of his mind. He let his hand drop. Below him, the gates swung open and the Roman forces streamed out, cavalry first, infantry running behind. Desperately, Cesare yanked at his reins, forcing the bit hard into his horse’s mouth, and wheeled. But the violence of his maneuver made his mount stumble, and he was quickly overtaken. As for his battalion, it broke and ran at the sight of the oncoming Roman brigades.

  Well, well, thought Ezio. My question is answered. These men were prepared to fight for money, but not from loyalty. And you can’t buy loyalty.

  “Kill the Assassins!” yelled Cesare frantically. “Uphold the honor of the Borgia!” But it was all in vain. He himself was surrounded.

  “Throw down your arms, Cesare,” Ezio called to him.

  “Never!”

  “This is not your city anymore.
You are no longer captain-general. The Orsini and the Colonna families are on the side of the new Pope, and when some of them paid lip service to you, that was all it was—lip service. They were only waiting for the chance to get back the cities and estates you stole from them.”

  A small deputation rode out through the gates now. Six knights in black armor, one of them bearing Julius II’s crest—a sturdy oak tree—on a pennant. At their head, on a dapple-grey palfrey—the very opposite of a warhorse—rode an elegantly dressed man whom Ezio instantly recognized as Fabio Orsini. He led his men straight up to the still-proud Cesare.

  Silence fell.

  “Cesare Borgia, called Valentino, sometime Cardinal of Valencia and Duke of Valence,” Orsini proclaimed, and Ezio could see the triumphant twinkle in his eye. “By order of His Holiness, Pope Julius II, I arrest you for the crimes of murder, betrayal, and incest!”

  The six knights fell in next to Cesare, two on each side, one before and one behind. The reins of his horse were taken from him and he was tied to the saddle.

  “No, no, no,no!” bawled Cesare. “This is not how it ends!”

  One of the knights flicked at Cesare’s horse’s rump, and it started forward at a trot.

  “This isnot how it ends!” Cesare yelled defiantly. “Chains will not hold me!” His voice rose to a scream. “I will not die by the hand of man!”

  Everybody heard him, but nobody was listening.

  “Come on, you,” said Orsini crisply.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “I was wondering what had happened to you,” Ezio said. “Then I saw the chalked drawing of the pointing hand. So I knew you were signaling me, which is why I sent you a message. And now—here you are! I thought you might have slipped away to France.”