“Step back from him, Cesare!”
One eyebrow went up and the dark eyes blazed in the handsome, flawed face. “Oh—how flattered I am that you have guessed my name correctly. But let me present my sister, Lucrezia.” He turned to nuzzle the blonde in a mostunbrotherly way as she squeezed his arm and pressed her lips dangerously close to his mouth. “And my close associates: Juan Borgia, cousin, and friend; my dear French ally, General Octavien de Valois; and, last but not least, my indispensable right-hand man, Micheletto Corella. What would I do without my friends?”
“And your father’s money.”
“Bad joke, my friend.”
As Cesare spoke, his troops moved like ghosts into the citadel. Ezio was powerless to stop them as his own men—hopelessly outnumbered—were swiftly overcome and disarmed.
“But I’m a good soldier, and part of the fun is choosing efficient support,” Cesare continued. “I must admit I didn’t think you’d be quite such a pushover. But of course, you aren’t getting any younger, are you?”
“I’ll kill you,” Ezio said evenly. “I’ll wipe you and your kind from the face of the earth.”
“Not today you won’t,” said Cesare, smiling. “And just look what I’ve got—courtesy of your uncle.” A gloved hand delved into a pouch at his side and from it he produced—to Ezio’s horror—the Apple!
“Useful gadget,” said Cesare, smiling thinly. “Leo tells me he already knows quite a lot about it so I’m hoping he’ll enlighten me further, which I’m sure he will if he wants to keep his head on his shoulders! Artists! Ten a penny, as I’m sure you’d agree.”
Lucrezia sniggered unfeelingly at this.
Ezio looked across at his old friend but da Vinci refused to meet his gaze. On the ground, Mario stirred and groaned. Cesare pushed his face into the ground with his boot and produced a gun—it was a new design, as Ezio immediately recognized, regretting the destruction of most of his own Codex weapons at the outset of the attack.
“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.
TEN
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 therocca, 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. Assassincondottieri 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. “Comeon!”
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.