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 did.
‘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 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 afterwards, but, even after they’d been overrun there by the triumphant Ottomans, pockets of them 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 towards 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, concentrating 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. 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 signalling the men aboard to bring it in closer. 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. 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 towards an old open gate across the road, supported by crumbling brick columns. He managed to sideswipe one of them 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. He struggled to bring his horses round 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 the soldiers precariously hanging on in the back of the other wagon were preparing grenades to hurl at him. Zigzagging as best he could to avoid the explosions, which went off either side of him and behind him, Ezio fought hard to keep control of his terrified and, by now, all but stampeding team. But the bombs 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 counter-move, drew level. Immediately, the captain made his team 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 it halfway into the air. Ezio was thrown clear while 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 gulley where a large outcrop of thorny shrubs broke his fall and hid him.
He lay prone, looking at the grey unforgiving 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.
15
Ezio heard voices, far away, as he lay in a kind of dream. He thought he saw the young man in white again, 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 they couldn’t see him. The thick shrubs must be concealing his body. As he’d vanished from their sight, the Templars organized a search party. Later, to the captain’s fury, it returned with nothing conclusive to report.
He waited a while, 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 th
e 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 towards 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 onwards 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 gate of the stockyard and, following the sound of raised voices, made his way through the apparently deserted village towards 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 which 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 answered 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 jittery. 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 now, 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 bicep.
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.
‘There’s no way out!’ the captain called after him. ‘You may as well turn and face me, you pitiful old dog.’ He fired again.
Ezio drew a breath and leapt to catch hold of the lintel of another doorway, swinging himself up so that he was able to get onto the flat clay roof of a dwelling. He ran across it to the other side as another bolt whistled past his ear.
‘Stand your ground and die,’ hollered the captain. ‘Your time has come, and you must accept it, even if it is far away from your wretched kennel in Rome! So come and meet your killer!’
Ezio could see where soldiers were running round to the back of the village, to cut off his line of retreat. But they had left the captain isolated, except for his two sergeants, and his quiver of bolts was empty.
The villagers had scattered and disappeared long since.
Ezio ducked behind the low wall surrounding the roof, unstrapped his bags from his back, and slipped the pistol harness onto his right wrist.
‘Why will you not quit?!’ the captain was calling, drawing his sword.
Ezio stood. ‘I never learned how,’ he called back in a clear voice, raising his gun.
The captain looked at the raised weapon in momentary panic and fear, then shrieking, ‘Out of my way!’ at his attendants, he shoved them aside and leapt from the tower to the ground. Ezio fired and caught him in mid-jump, the bullet hitting him in the left knee. With a howl of pain, the captain dropped to the ground, dashing his head against a sharp stone, and rolled over there. The sergeants fled.
Ezio crossed the deserted square. No soldiers came back. Either their fear of Ezio had persuaded them by now that he was indeed a supernatural being, or their love of their captain could not have been very great. There was silence except for the steady clatter of the waterwheel, and the captain’s agonized whimpering.
The captain caught Ezio’s eye as he approached. ‘Ah, dammit,’ he said. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Go on – kill me!’
‘You have something I need,’ Ezio told him calmly, reloading his gun so that both chambers were ready. The captain eyed the weapon.
‘I see the old hound still has his bite,’ he said, through gritted teeth. Blood flowed from his knee and from the more serious wound on his left temple.
‘The book you carry. Where is it?’
The captain looked crafty. ‘Niccolò Polo’s old journal, you mean? You know about that? You surprise me, Assassin.’
‘I am full of surprises,’ Ezio replied. ‘Give it to me.’
Seeing there was no help for it, the captain, grunting, drew an old leather-bound book, some twelve inches by six, from his jerkin. His hand was shaking, and he dropped it onto the ground. The captain looked at it, with a laugh that died, gurgling, in his throat. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘We have gleaned all its secrets, and found the first of the five keys already. When we have the rest, the Grand Temple and all the power within will be ours.’
Ezio looked at him pityingly. ‘You are deceived, soldier. There is no ancient temple at Masyaf. Only a library, full of wisdom.’
The captain looked at him. ‘Your forebear Altaïr had the Apple of Eden in his control for sixty years, Ezio. He gained much more than what you call wisdom. He learned … everything!’
Ezio thought about that fleetingly. He knew the Apple was safely buried in a church crypt in Rome – he and Machiavelli had seen to that. But his attention was drawn back immediately by a sharp gasp of pain from the captain. Blood had been streaming from his untended wounds all the time they had been speaking. Now the man had the death pallor on him. A curiously peaceful expression came over his face, and he lay back as a huge long, last sighing breath escaped him.
Ezio watched him for a moment. ‘You were a real bastardo,’ he said. ‘But – for all that – Requiescat in Pace.’
He leant forward and gently closed the man’s eyes with his gloved hand.
The waterwheel hammered on. Otherwise, there was silence.
Ezio picked up the book and turned it over in his hands. On its cover, he saw an embossed symbol, its gilding long since faded. The emblem of the Assassin Brotherhood. Smiling slightly, he opened it to the title page.
LA CROCIATA SEGRETA
Niccolò Polo
MASYAF, giugno, MCCLVII
COSTANTINOPOLI, gennaio, MCCLVIII
As he read, Ezio drew in a breath.
Constantinople, he thought. Of course …
16
The breeze freshened, and Ezio looked up from Niccolò Polo’s book, open on his lap, as he sat under an awning on the afterdeck of the large broad-bellied baghlah while it cut through the clear blue water of the White Sea, both lateens and jib set to take full advantage of a favourable wind.
The long journey from Latakia on the Syrian coast had first brought him back to Cyprus
. The next port of call had been Rhodes – where his attention had been caught by the arrival on board of a new passenger, a beautiful woman of perhaps thirty wearing a green dress which perfectly accorded with her copper-gold hair. Then on through the Dodecanese north towards the Dardanelles and, at last, the Sea of Marmara.
Now the voyage was drawing towards its close. Sailors called to each other as passengers lined up along the gunwale to watch as, a mile distant, glittering in the sharp sunlight, the great city of Constantinople rose on the port bow. Ezio tried to identify parts of the city from the map he had bought in the Syrian port before embarkation. Near him stood an expensively dressed young man, probably still in his teens, an Ottoman, but also clearly familiar with the city, with whom he’d struck up a nodding acquaintance. The young man was busy with a mariner’s astrolabe, taking measurements and making notes in an ivory-bound copybook, which hung on a silk cord from his belt.
‘Where’s that?’ Ezio asked, pointing. He wanted to have as much knowledge of the place as possible before landing. News of his escape from the Templars at Masyaf would not be far behind him, and he’d need to work fast.
‘That’s the Bayezid Quarter. The big mosque you can see was built by the Sultan about five years ago. And just beyond it you can see the roofs of the Grand Bazaar.’
‘Got it,’ said Ezio, squinting in the sun to focus and wishing that Leonardo had got around to making that instrument he was always talking about – a kind of extendable tube with lenses – which would make distant things seem closer.
‘Watch your sleeve-purse when you go to the Bazaar,’ advised the young man. ‘You get a pretty mixed bag of people there.’
‘Like in any souk.’
‘Evet.’ The young man smiled. ‘Just over there, where the towers are, is the Imperial District. That grey dome you can see is the old church of Hagia Sofia. It’s a mosque now, of course. And beyond it, you see that long low yellow building – more of a complex of buildings, really – with two low domes close together and a spire? That’s Topkapi Sarayi. One of the first buildings we erected after the conquest, and we’re still working on it.’
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