Assassin's Creed: Renaissance

by Oliver Bowden

  Ezio was overwhelmed at this information - it was a huge amount to take in all at once. 'Assassins, Templars, this strange Codex -'

  'I will be your guide, Ezio. But you must first learn to open your mind, and always remember this: nothing is true. Everything is permitted.'

  Mario would tell him nothing more then, though Ezio pressed him. Instead, his uncle continued to put him through the most rigorous process of military training, and from dawn to dusk he found himself exercising with the young condottieri on the practice-ground, falling into bed each night too exhausted to think of anything but sleep. And then, one day.

  'Well done, nephew!' his uncle told him. 'I think you are ready.'

  Ezio was pleased. 'Thank you, Uncle, for all you've given me.'

  Mario's answer was to give the boy a bear-hug. 'You are family! Such is my duty and desire!'

  'I'm glad you persuaded me to stay.'

  Mario looked at him keenly. 'So - have you reconsidered your decision to leave?'

  Ezio returned his gaze. 'I am sorry, Uncle, but my mind is made up. For the safety of Mamma and Claudia - I still intend to make for the coast and take ship for Spain.'

  Mario did not hide his displeasure. 'Forgive me, nephew, but I have not taught you the skills you now have either for my own amusement or your exclusive benefit. I have taught you so that you may be better prepared to strike against our enemies.'

  'And, if they find me, so I will.'

  'So,' Mario said bitterly. 'You want to leave? To throw away everything your father fought and died for? To deny your very heritage? Well! I cannot pretend to you that I am not disappointed - highly disappointed. But so be it. Orazio will take you to the convent when you judge the moment to be right for your mother to travel, and he will see you on your way. I wish you buona fortuna.'

  With that, Mario turned his back on his nephew and stalked away. More time passed, as Ezio found he had to allow his mother enough peace and quiet to pave the way to her recovery. He himself made his preparations for leaving with a heavy heart. At last he set out to pay what he imagined might be his last visit to the convent to visit his mother and sister before taking them away, and found them better than he'd dared to hope. Claudia had made friends with some of the younger nuns, and it was clear to Ezio, to his surprise and not greatly to his pleasure, that she was beginning to be attracted to the life. Meanwhile his mother was making a steady but slow recovery, and the abbess, on hearing of his plans, demurred, advising him that rest was what she still badly needed, and that she should not be moved again just yet.

  When he returned to Mario's castle, therefore, he was full of misgivings, and he was aware that these misgivings had grown with time.

  At that period, some kind of military preparations had been going on in Monteriggioni, and now they seemed to be coming to a head. The sight of them distracted him. His uncle was nowhere to be seen, but he managed to track Orazio down to the map-room.

  'What's going on?' he asked. 'Where's my uncle?'

  'He's preparing for battle.'

  'What? With whom?'

  'Oh, I expect he'd have told you if he'd thought you were staying. But we all know that that is not your intention.'

  'Well.'

  'Listen, your old friend Vieri de' Pazzi has set himself up at San Gimignano. He's tripling the garrison there and has let it be known that as soon as he's ready, he's coming to raze Monteriggioni to the ground. So we're going there first, to crush the little snake and teach the Pazzi a lesson they won't forget in a hurry.'

  Ezio took a deep breath. Surely this changed everything. And perhaps it was Fate - the very stimulus he'd unconsciously been seeking. 'Where is my uncle?'

  'In the stables.'

  Ezio was already halfway out of the room.

  'Hey! Where are you off to?'

  'To the stables! There must be a horse for me, too!'

  Orazio smiled as he watched him go.

  7

  Mario, with Ezio riding at his side, led his forces to within sight of San Gimignano in the middle of a spring night in 1477. It was to be the beginning of a tough confrontation.

  'Tell me again what made you change your mind,' said Mario, still much pleased by his nephew's change of heart.

  'You just like to hear it.'

  'What if I do? Anyway, I knew it'd take Maria a good while to recover, and they are safe enough where they are, as you well know.'

  Ezio smiled. 'As I've already told you, I wanted to take responsibility. As I've already told you, Vieri troubles you because of me.'

  'And as I've told you, young man, you certainly have a healthy sense of your own importance. The truth is, Vieri troubles us because he is a Templar and we are Assassins.'

  As he spoke, Mario was scanning the tall towers, built close together, of San Gimignano. The square-built structures seemed almost to scrape the sky, and Ezio had a strange sense of having seen such a view before, but it must have been either in a dream or in another life, for he had no precise memory of the occasion.

  The tops of the towers were each aflame with torch-light, and there were many other torches visible on the battlements of the town walls, and at its gates.

  'He's well garrisoned,' said Mario. 'And to judge by the torches it looks as if Vieri may well be expecting us. It's a pity, but I'm not surprised. After all, he has his spies just as I have mine.' He paused. 'I can see archers on the ramparts, and the gates are heavily guarded.' He continued to scan the city. 'But even so, it looks as if he hasn't got enough men to cover every gate sufficiently. The one on the south side looks less well defended - it must be the place he expects an attack to be least likely. So that is where we'll strike.'

  He raised an arm and kicked his horse's flanks. His force moved forward behind him. Ezio rode beside him. 'This is what we'll do,' said Mario, his voice urgent. 'My men and I will engage the guards at the gate, while you must find a way over the wall and get the gate opened from the inside. We must be silent and swift.'

  He unslung a bandolier of throwing-knives and handed it to Ezio. 'Take these. Use them to dispatch the archers.'

  As soon as they were close enough, they dismounted. Mario led a group of his best soldiers towards the cohort of guards posted at the southern entrance to the town. Ezio left them, and hurried the last hundred yards on foot, using the cover of bushes and shrubs to conceal his progress, until he found himself at the foot of the wall. He had his hood up, and by the light of the torches at the gate he could see that the shadow cast by his hood on the wall bore a strange resemblance to an eagle's head. He looked up. The wall rose sheer above him, fifty feet or more. He couldn't see if anyone was on the battlements above. Slinging his bandolier securely, he began to climb. It was hard, as the walls were of dressed stone and gave few opportunities for footholds, but embrasures near the top allowed him to gain a firm place to lodge himself while he peered warily over the battlements' edge. Along the rampart to his left, two archers, their backs to him, were leaning over the wall, bows drawn. They had seen Mario's attack begin, and were preparing to fire down on the Assassin condottieri. Ezio did not hesitate. It was their lives or those of his friends, and now he appreciated the new skills his uncle had insisted on teaching him. Quickly, concentrating his mind and his eye in the flickering semi-darkness, he drew two knives and threw them, one after the other, with deadly accuracy. The first struck an archer in the nape of the neck - the blow fatal in an instant. The man slumped over the crenellations without a whisper. The next knife flew a little lower, catching the second man full in the back with such force that, with a hollow cry, he pitched forward into the blackness beneath.

  Below him, at the foot of a narrow stone stairway, lay the gate, but now he appreciated that Vieri's force was not enough to guard the city with absolute efficiency, for there were no soldiers posted on its interior side. He bounded down the steps three at a time, seeming almost to fly, and soon located the lever that operated the heavy iron bolts which locked the solid, ten-foot-high oak doors
. He pulled it, needing all his strength to do so, for it was not designed to yield to the force of just one man, but at last the job was done, and he hauled on one of the massive rings which were set into the doors at shoulder height. It gave, and the gate began to swing open, revealing as it did so that Mario and his men were just completing their bloody task. Two Assassin men lay dead, but twenty of Vieri's force had been sent to their Maker.

  'Well done, Ezio!' Mario cried softly. So far, no alarm seemed to have been raised, but it would only be a matter of time.

  'Come on!' said Mario. 'Silently, now!' He turned to one of his sergeants and said, 'Go back and bring the main force up.'

  Then he led the way carefully through the silent streets - Vieri must have imposed some kind of curfew, for there was no one to be seen. Once, they almost fell foul of a Pazzi patrol. Shrinking back into the shadows, they let it pass, before rushing up from the rear to attack the men and bring them down with clinical efficiency.

  'What next?' Ezio asked his uncle.

  'We need to locate the captain of the guard here. His name's Roberto. He'll know where Vieri is.' Mario was showing more stress than usual. 'This is taking too long. It'll be better if we split up. Look, I know Roberto. At this time of night, he'll either be drunk in his favourite taverna or he'll be already sleeping it off in the citadel. You take the citadel. Take Orazio and a dozen good men with you.' He looked at the sky, which was just beginning to lighten, and tasted the air, which already carried the coolness of a new day in it. 'Meet me by the cathedral before cock-crow to report. And don't forget - I leave you in command of this gang of hooligans!' He smiled affectionately at his men, took his own force, and disappeared along a street that led uphill.

  'The citadel's in the north-west of the town - sir,' said Orazio. He grinned, as did the others. Ezio sensed both their obedience to Mario, and their misgivings at having been entrusted to the command of such an untried officer.

  'Then let's go,' Ezio replied firmly. 'Follow me. At my signal.'

  The citadel formed one side of the town's main square, not far from the cathedral and near the top of the small hill on which the town was built. They reached it without difficulty, but before they entered it Ezio noticed a number of Pazzi guards posted at its entrance. Motioning his men to stay back, he approached them, keeping to the shadows and silent as a fox, until he was close enough to overhear the conversation which was going on between two of them. It was clear that they were unhappy with Vieri's leadership, and the more vehement of the two was in full flow.

  'I tell you, Tebaldo,' the former was saying, 'I'm not happy with that young puppy Vieri. I don't think he could aim his piss into a bucket, let alone defend a town against a determined force. As for Capitano Roberto, he drinks so much he's like a bottle of Chianti dressed in a uniform!'

  'You talk too much, Zohane,' cautioned Tebaldo. 'Remember what happened to Bernardo when he dared to open his mouth.'

  The other checked himself, and nodded soberly. 'You are right. I heard Vieri had him blinded.'

  'Well, I'd like to keep my eyesight, thank you very much, so we should end this talk. We don't know how many of our comrades feel like us, and Vieri has spies everywhere.'

  Satisfied, Ezio made his way back to his own troop. An unhappy garrison is rarely an efficient one; but there was no guarantee that Vieri did not command a strong loyal core of Pazzi adherents. As for the rest of Vieri's men, Ezio had learned for himself how strong a commander fear itself can be. But the task now was to gain access to the citadel. Ezio scanned the square. Apart from the small force of Pazzi guards, it was dark and empty.

  'Orazio?'

  'Yessir?'

  'Will you engage these men and finish them off? Quickly and silently. I'm going to try to get up on the roof and see whether they've got any more people posted in the courtyard.'

  'It's what we came here to do, sir.'

  Leaving Orazio and his soldiers to take on the guards, Ezio, checking that he still had sufficient throwing-knives in his bandolier, ran a little way into a side street adjacent to the citadel, climbed to a nearby roof, and from it leapt to the roof of the citadel, which was built round its own interior courtyard. He thanked God that Vieri had evidently neglected to post men in the high towers of the houses of the dominant local families, which punctuated the town, since from that vantage point they could have surveyed everything that was going on. But he also knew that gaining control of those towers would be the first objective of Mario's main force. From the roof of the citadel, he could see that the courtyard was deserted, leapt down to the top of its colonnade, and from there dropped to the ground. It was an easy manoeuvre to open the gates, and to position his men, who had dragged the bodies of the defeated Pazzi patrol out of sight, in the shadows of the colonnade. To avoid suspicion, they had reclosed the citadel gates behind them.

  The citadel seemed, to all intents and purposes, deserted. But soon afterwards there came the sound of voices from the square beyond, and another group of Vieri's men appeared, opening the gates and entering the courtyard, supporting among them a thickset man, running to fat, who was clearly drunk.

  'Where've the gate guards buggered off to?' the man wanted to know. 'Don't say Vieri's countermanded me and sent them off on another one of his bloody patrols!'

  'Ser Roberto,' one of the men supporting him pleaded. 'Isn't it time you got some rest?'

  'Whaddyew mean? Made it back here just fine, didn't I? Anyway, night's still young!'

  The new arrivals managed to seat their chief on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the courtyard and gathered round, uncertain what to do next.

  'Anyone would think I'm not a good captain!' said Roberto, self-pityingly.

  'Nonsense, sir!' said the man closest to him.

  'Vieri thinks I'm not,' said Roberto, 'You should hear the way he talks to me!' He paused, looking round and trying to focus before continuing in a maudlin tone: 'It's only a matter of time before I'm replaced - or worse!' He stopped again, snuffling. 'Where's that bloody bottle? Give it here!' He drank a deep draught, looked at the bottle to assure himself that it was empty, and flung it away. 'It's Mario's fault! I couldn't believe it when our spies reported that he'd taken his nephew in - rescued the little bugger from Vieri himself! Now Vieri can scarcely think straight for rage, and I have to face my old compagno!' He looked around blearily. 'Dear old Mario! We were brothers-in-arms once, did you know that? But he refused to come over to the Pazzi with me, even though it was better money, better quarters, better equipment - the lot! I wish he were here now. For two pins, I'd -'

  'Excuse me,' Ezio interrupted, stepping forward.

  'Wha- ?' said Roberto. 'Who're you?'

  'Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Mario's nephew.'

  'What?' Roberto roared, struggling to his feet and grabbing unsuccessfully for his sword. 'Arrest the little tyke!' He leant close, so that Ezio could smell the sour wine on his breath. Onions, too. 'You know what, Ezio,' he smiled. 'I should be grateful to you. Now that I've got you, there's nothing Vieri wouldn't give me. Maybe I'll retire. A nice little villa on the coast, perhaps -'

  'Don't count your chickens, Capitano,' said Ezio. Roberto spun round to see what his men had already discovered: that they were surrounded by Assassin mercenaries, all armed to the teeth.

  'Ah,' said Roberto, sinking down again. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him.

  Once the Pazzi guards had been manacled and taken to the citadel's dungeon, Roberto, provided with a fresh bottle, sat with Ezio at a table in a room off the courtyard, and talked. At last Roberto was convinced.

  'You want Vieri? I'll tell you where he is. It's all up with me anyway. Go to the Palazzo of the Dolphin in the square near the northern gate. There's a meeting being held there.'

  'Who is he meeting? Do you know?'

  Roberto shrugged. 'More of his people from Florence, I think. Supposed to be bringing reinforcements with them.'

  They were interrupted by Orazio, looking wor
ried. 'Ezio! Quickly! There's a battle going on over by the cathedral. We'd better get going!'

  'All right! Let's go!'

  'What about him?'

  Ezio looked at Roberto. 'Leave him. I think he may have chosen the right side at last.'

  As soon as he was out in the square, Ezio could hear the noise of fighting coming from the open space in front of the cathedral. Drawing nearer, he saw that his uncle's men, their backs to him, were being forced to retreat by a large brigade of Pazzi troops. Using his throwing-knives to clear a path, he fought his way to his uncle's side and told him what he'd learned.

  'Good for Roberto!' said Mario, barely missing a beat, as he cut and sliced at his attackers. 'I always regretted his going over to the Pazzi, but he's turned up trumps at last. Go! Find out what Vieri's up to.'

  'But what about you? Will you be able to hold them off?'

  Mario looked grim. 'For a while at least, but our main force should have secured most of the towers by now, and then they'll be here to join us. So make haste, Ezio! Don't let Vieri escape!'

  The palazzo lay in the extreme north of the city, far from the fighting, though the Pazzi guards here were numerous -probably the reinforcements of whom Roberto had spoken - and Ezio had to pick his way carefully to avoid them.

  He arrived just in time: the meeting appeared to be over, and he could see a group of four robed men making their way to a group of tethered horses. Ezio recognized Jacopo de' Pazzi, his nephew, Francesco, Vieri himself, and - he let out a gasp of surprise - the tall Spaniard who had been present at his father's execution. To his further surprise, Ezio noticed the arms of a cardinal embroidered on the shoulder of the man's cloak. The men drew to a halt by the horses, and Ezio managed to reach the cover of a nearby tree to see if he could catch anything of their conversation. He had to strain, and the words came in snatches, but he overheard enough to intrigue him.