Ezio nodded.
“I’ll kill him!”
And she ran off. “Wait!” Ezio called after her, but it was too late. She was already gone.
Ezio set off after her and found her at last in a secluded spot overlooking a small public square. He approached with care. She had her back to him and was staring at something happening in the square, still invisible to him.
“You aren’t very good at cooperation,” he said as he came up.
She didn’t turn. “I’m here to rescue what remains of my men,” she said coldly. “Not to make friends.”
“You don’t have to be friends to cooperate,” said Ezio, drawing closer. “But it would help to know where your men were, and I can help you find them.”
He was interrupted by an anguished scream and hurried up to join the Turkish spy. Her face had hardened.
“Right there,” she said, pointing.
Ezio followed the direction of her finger and saw, in the square, a number of Ottoman prisoners seated on the ground, their hands bound. As they watched, one of them was thrown to the ground by Byzantine guards. There was a makeshift gallows nearby, and from it another Ottoman hung from his wrists, with his arms bent behind him. Near him stood Shahkulu, instantly recognizable despite the executioner’s mask he wore. The man screamed as Shahkulu delivered blow after blow to his body.
“It’s Janos,” Dilara said to Ezio, turning to him at last. “We must help him!”
Ezio looked closely at what was going on. “I have a gun, but I can’t use it,” he said. “The body armor he’s wearing is too thick for bullets.” He paused. “I’ll have to get in close.”
“There’s little time. This isn’t an interrogation. Shahkulu is torturing Janos to death. And then there’ll be another. And another . . .”
She winced at each blow and each scream.
They could hear the laughter and the taunts of Shahkulu’s men.
“I think I can see how we can do this,” said Ezio. He unhooked a smoke bomb from his belt. “When I throw this, you go around to the right. See if you can start cutting the bonds of your men under cover of the smoke from this bomb.”
She nodded. “And Shahkulu?”
“Leave him to me.”
“Just make sure you finish the rat.”
Ezio pulled the pin from the bomb, waited a moment for the smoke to start to gush, and threw it toward the gallows with a careful aim. The Byzantines thought they had made sure of all the opposition and were not expecting an attack. They were taken completely by surprise.
In the confusion, Ezio and Dilara bounded down the slope and into the square, splitting to right and left. Ezio shot down the first guard to come at him and smashed another’s jaw with the bracer on his left forearm. Then he unleashed his hidden-blade and moved in fast toward Shahkulu, who’d drawn a heavy scimitar and was standing his ground, twisting to the left and right, unsure of where the attack would come from. The moment his attention was diverted, Ezio leapt at him and plunged his blade into the top of his chest between the jawline of the mask and his body armor. Dark blood bubbled forth around his fist as he kept the blade where it was.
Shahkulu fell, Ezio holding on to him and falling with him, ending up kneeling over the man, whose struggles were losing their violence. His eyes closed.
“Men who make a fetish out of murder deserve no pity,” Ezio said, his lips close to the man’s ear.
But then Shahkulu’s eyes sprang open in a manic stare, and a mailed fist shot to Ezio’s throat, gripping it tightly. Shahkulu started to laugh crazily. As he did so, the blood pumped out faster from his wound, and Ezio rammed the blade in harder and twisted it viciously as he did so. With a last spasm, Shahkulu thrust Ezio from him, sending him sprawling in the dust. Then his back arched in his death agony, a rattle sounded in his throat, and he fell back, inert.
Ezio picked himself up and cleaned his blade on Shahkulu’s cloak. Dilara had already cut some of her men free and Ezio was in time to see her throw herself on the back of the last, fleeing Byzantine survivor, bringing him down and slicing his throat open in one clean movement. She jumped back from the kill, landing like a cat, and turned to her rescued troops.
Ezio gave Shahkulu’s body a kick, to be sure, this time, that he was dead. Dilara was pulling her men to their feet.
“Bless you, Dilara,” said Janos, as she cut him down.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
Ezio came up. “Was yours the detachment that brought the guns for Manuel?”
She nodded.
“Then they must be destroyed.”
She nodded again. “But most of them don’t actually work. The gunpowder’s real enough though—we couldn’t fake that.”
“Bene,” said Ezio. He looked at the Ottomans standing round him. “Get yourselves out of sight until you hear the explosions, then run!”
“Explosions?” said Dilara. “If you do that, all hell will break loose. You will panic the entire city.”
“I’m counting on that,” replied Ezio. “The explosions will destroy whatever good guns there are, and as for the panic, it can only help us.”
Dilara considered this. “All right. I’ll take my men to a place of safety. But what about you?”
“After the explosions have gone off, I’m going after Manuel Palaiologos.”
SIXTY-TWO
There were great vaults in the underground city—vast man-made caverns where the gunpowder and arms caches for Manuel’s army were stored. A system of block-and-tackle pulley systems for transporting powder kegs on taut ropeways from one place to another had been set up, and, as Ezio watched from a vantage point in a gallery he had reached on the Fifth Level, he saw groups of Byzantine civilians engaged in just such activity, under the watchful eye of Manuel’s renegade troops. It was a perfect opportunity, and he thanked God that their security was so slack. They were obviously confident that they were under no threat of attack, and he had moved too fast to be overtaken by the discovery of Shahkulu’s corpse and those of his fellow torturers.
He’d replaced his hidden-blade with his hookblade and reloaded his pistol. He got in among a group of workers and watched as a barrel was maneuvered down one of the ropes, between two sets of blocks and tackle. Around them, hundreds of barrels were piled on top of one another, and along the walls, wooden crates of muskets were ranged.
“Steady, now! Steady!” an overseer was shouting. “This is gunpowder, not millet!”
“Got it!” a man operating a winch called back.
Ezio surveyed his surroundings, planning. If he could manage to start one explosion in such a way that it would lead to a chain reaction along the three warehouse vaults he knew there to be . . .
It might just work.
As he roved between the halls, blending in with the workers, he listened carefully to their conversation, to test their mood. And in doing so, he discovered that not all Byzantines were villains. As usual, it was just the ones whose egos were too big, who were too hungry for power, who were to blame for everyone else’s misfortune.
“It could be worse, you know,” one woman was saying to a male fellow worker.
“Worse? Worse than this?”
“Better the turban of the Turk than the tiara of the Pope. At least the Ottomans have some respect for our Orthodox Church.”
“Shh-h! If anyone heard you . . . !” warned another woman.
“She’s crazy!” The man turned to the first woman. “Listen to yourself!”
“OK, so I’m crazy. And if you prefer forced labor, living underground like a mole, then fine!”
The man considered this. “Well, it’s certainly true that I don’t want to go to war. I just want to feed my family.”
Another man, an overseer dressed in Templar uniform, had overheard this, and put in, not altogether unsympathetically: “No one wants war, friend—but what can we do? Look at us! Look how we live! Those Turks took our land. Do you think we should just roll over without a fight?”
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“No, no,” said the first man to speak. “I just—I don’t know. I’m just tired of this. We’re all so tired of fighting!”
Amen to that, thought Ezio, as he slipped away between two twenty-foot-high tiers of barrels.
Once he was alone, he broached a barrel at ground level with the point of his scimitar and, after collecting a stream of powder in a leather pouch, laid a trail down the aisle between the rows of barrels to the entrance of the second hall. He did the same thing there, and in the third hall, until the trail reached the arched door leading out of it. Then he waited patiently until all the ordinary workers had moved out of harm’s way for the night.
Only the guards remained.
Ezio made sure his retreat was assured, took up a position a few yards from the exit, unleashed his pistol, and fired into the nearest barrel. Then he turned and ran.
The titanic serial explosions that followed rocked the foundations of the underground city like an earthquake. Ceilings crumbled and fell behind him as he fled. Everywhere, there was smoke, dust, rubble, and chaos.
SIXTY-THREE
Ezio reached the great chamber on the Second Level at about the same time as Manuel, who stumbled in, surrounded by a large force of crack guards. Ezio concealed himself behind a buttress, watched, and waited. He was going to finish things tonight if he could. And he’d seen that Manuel was holding the missing Masyaf key—the one the Templars had unearthed beneath the Palace of Topkapi. If he had that with him, then the would-be next emperor of Byzantium must be planning his escape.
“What the hell is going on?” bellowed Manuel, half in anger, half in fear.
“Sabotage, Manuel,” said a Templar captain at his elbow. “You need to take cover.”
A crowd of bawling, panicky people had filled one end of the chamber by then. Ezio watched Manuel as he stuffed the key into a satchel he had slung around his corpulent body, and elbowed the Templar officer aside. “Get out of my way,” he snapped.
He clambered up onto a podium and addressed the crowd, which Ezio joined, edging through the throng, ever closer to his quarry as Manuel spoke.
“Citizens!” Manuel said in a high voice. “Soldiers! Compose yourselves. Do not give in to fear! We are the true shepherds of Constantinopolis. We are the lords of this land. We are Byzantines!” He paused for effect, but if he’d hoped for applause, there was none. So he plowed on. “Kouráyo! Have courage! Stand fast! Do not let anyone break your—”
He broke off, as he noticed Ezio approaching. Some sixth sense must have triggered an alarm within him, for he swore sharply to himself and jumped nimbly from the podium, hurrying away toward an exit at the back of the hall, yelling to his bodyguards as he did so, “Stop that man! The tall one in the peaked hood! Cut him down!”
Ezio thrust his way through the confused mob and started off in pursuit of Manuel, dodging and knocking down Templar guards as he did so. At last he was free of them and risked a glance behind him. They were as confused as the townsfolk, looking in every direction but the one in which he’d gone, shouting challenges, barking orders, and running off determinedly before checking themselves. Manuel himself had scuttled off too fast for any of his men to have had time to follow him. Only Ezio’s sharp eyes had not let him out of his sight.
For such a portly person, Manuel could certainly move. Ezio rushed down a long, dimly lit corridor-street, pausing only to glance down side turnings to assure himself that his quarry had not turned off; then he caught a glimpse, far up ahead, of a shimmering silk robe catching the torchlight as Manuel scrambled up a narrow stone stairway cut into the rock, ascending to the First Level. The man who would be king was seeking the quickest way out, his munitions gone and his army in complete disarray.
Ezio stormed after him.
He cornered him at last in an empty house, carved out of the living rock on the First Level. Manuel turned to face him with a curious smile playing on his lascivious lips.
“Are you here for the Masyaf key?” he asked. “Is that it? Have you come to rob us of two years of effort—to recover what the Assassins threw away?”
Ezio did not reply but eyed him warily. There was no telling what tricks this man might still have up his sleeve.
“You wage a losing battle, Assassin!” Manuel continued, though something of desperation was creeping into his voice. “Our numbers are growing, and our influence is expanding. We are hidden in plain sight!”
Ezio made a step closer.
“Stop and think for a moment,” Manuel said, holding up a beringed hand. “Think about the lives you have disrupted today—the anarchy you have sown here! You! You take advantage of a poor and displaced people, using us to further your own vain quest! But we fight for dignity, Assassin! We fight to restore peace to this troubled land.”
“Templars are always quick to talk of peace,” Ezio replied. “But very slow to concede power.”
Manuel made a dismissive gesture. “That is because power begets peace. Idiot! It cannot happen in reverse. These people would drown without a firm hand to lift them up and keep them in line!”
Ezio smiled. “And to think you are the monster I came here to kill.”
Manuel looked him in the eye, and Ezio had the disquieting impression that the man was resigned to his fate. There was a curious dignity about the plump, dandified figure, with his flashing jewels and his beautifully tended mustache. Ezio unleashed his blade and stabbed Manuel deep in the chest, finding himself helping the man down as he sank to his knees. But Manuel didn’t fall. He supported himself on the back of a stone bench and looked at Ezio calmly. When he spoke, his voice sounded exhausted.
“I should have been Constantine’s successor. I had so many plans. Do you know how long I waited?”
“Your dream dies with you, Manuel. Your empire has gone.”
Though clearly in pain, Manuel managed to sound amused. “Ah, but I am not the only one with this vision, Assassin. The dream of our Order is universal. Ottoman, Byzantine . . . these are only labels, costumes and fa-çades. Beneath these trappings, all Templars are part of the same family.”
Ezio found himself losing patience, and he was aware of time passing. He was not out of there himself, yet. “Enough prattling. I am here for the Masyaf key.”
He stooped and took the satchel Manuel still had slung round his shoulder. Manuel suddenly looked much older than his fifty-eight years. “Then take it,” he said in pained amusement. “Take it and seek your fortune. See if you get within a hundred leagues of the Masyaf Archive before one of us finishes you off.”
Then his whole body stiffened, and he stretched his arms as if waking from sleep, before pitching forward into a blackness without dimension and without sound.
Ezio looked at the body for a moment, thinking his own thoughts, then rifled swiftly through Manuel’s satchel. He took nothing but the key, which he transferred to his own side pouch, throwing the satchel down by Manuel’s side.
Then he turned to go.
SIXTY-FOUR
The upper levels of the underground city had been sealed off by Templar and Byzantine troops, loyal to their officers and unsure of what might happen next. It would not be long before Manuel’s body was discovered, and Ezio decided that his best—and perhaps his only—means of escape would be by way of the underground river system that occupied the Eleventh Level of the complex.
The lower levels of the Derinkuyu were like a hell on earth. Smoke and fumes filled the underground streets, and fires had broken out in pockets on levels both below and above the warehouses where Ezio had destroyed Manuel’s armory and munitions dump. Fallen ceilings and walls had blocked many routes, and Ezio had to make frequent detours. Several times, as he passed piles of rubble, he could see protruding from the debris the limbs of those crushed by collapsing stonework. He tried, and failed, to close his mind to the consequences of what he had done. Soldiers and citizens alike wandered about in a kind of daze, scarves and handkerchiefs pressed to their faces, eyes streaming. Ezio, hi
mself fighting to breathe at times, doggedly pressed on downward by a series of ramps, corridors, and stairways cut into the rock, until he reached the lowest level of all.
It was clearer here, and the dank smell of water in a confined space had begun to reach him even as he arrived at the Ninth Level.
Because of the tumult and confusion caused by the explosions, Ezio had been able to pass through the city unmolested, and he stood alone on a jetty by an artificial underground lake. Far away to what he imagined must be the south, for it was difficult to keep one’s bearings down there, he saw a glimmer of light where the river feeding the lake led away from it again toward the open air. It had to be a long way away and far downhill from the site of Derinkuyu, but Ezio had no time to ponder this, because, setting off from another jetty perhaps twenty yards distant, he saw a raft, manned by a half dozen Byzantine sailors. But it was the passenger who really caught Ezio’s attention. An elegant, bearded man standing on the after deck.
Prince Ahmet Osman.
Ahmet had seen Ezio, too, and directed his oarsmen to make their way toward him. When he came within speaking range, he called mockingly to the Assassin.
“Poor Manuel. The last of the Palaiologi.”
Ezio was too surprised to speak for a moment. Then he said: “News travels fast.”
“The Assassins aren’t the only ones with spies.” He shrugged. “But I should not have left Manuel in charge of our Masyaf expedition. He was an arrogant man. Impossible to keep in line.”
“You disappoint me, Ahmet. Why the Templars?”
“Well, Ezio—or should I keep up the pretense and continue to call you ‘Marcello’?—it is like this: I am tired of all the pointless blood feuds that have pitted father against son and brother against brother. To achieve true peace, mankind must think and move as one body, with one master mind.” He paused. “The secrets in the Grand Temple will give us just that. And Altaïr will lead us to it.”
Revelations Page 24