Revelations Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PART I

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  PART II

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  SEVENTY-TWO

  SEVENTY-THREE

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  SEVENTY-SIX

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  PART III

  SEVENTY-NINE

  EIGHTY

  EIGHTY-ONE

  EIGHTY-TWO

  EIGHT Y-THREE

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  EIGHTY-SIX

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  EIGHT Y-EIGHT

  EIGHT Y-NINE

  NINETY

  NINETY-ONE

  NINETY-TWO

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN TERMS

  Acknowledgements

  Ace titles by Oliver Bowden

  SHOOT TO KILL

  “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 might 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 around 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.

  Ace titles by Oliver Bowden

  ASSASSIN’S CREED: RENAISSANCE

  ASSASSIN’S CREED: BROTHERHOOD

  ASSASSIN’S CREED: THE SECRET CRUSADE

  ASSASSIN’S CREED: REVELATIONS

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ASSASSIN’S CREED® REVELATIONS

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Penguin Books Ltd.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace premium edition / December 2011

  Copyright © 2011 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

  The Divine Comedy: Inferno by Dante, translated and edited by Robin Kirkpatrick (Penguin Classics 2006). Translation and editorial matter copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2006. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

  The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio by Dante, translated and edited by Robin Kirkpatrick (Penguin Classics 2007). Translation and editorial matter copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2007. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

  The Divine Comedy: Paradiso by Dante, translated by Robin Kirkpatrick (Penguin Classics 2007). Translation and editorial matter copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2007. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

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  ISBN : 978-1-101-57100-2

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  PART I

 
; At one point midway on our path in life,

  I came around and found myself now searching

  through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost.

  How hard it is to say what that wood was,

  a wilderness, savage, brute, harsh and wild.

  Only to think of it renews my fear!

  –DANTE, INFERNO

  ONE

  An eagle soared, high in the hard, clear sky.

  The traveler, dusty, battered from the road, drew his eyes from it, pulled himself up and over a low, rough wall, and stood motionless for a moment, scanning the scene with keen eyes. The rugged snowcapped mountains fenced in the castle, protecting it and enclosing it as it reared on the crest of its own height, the domed tower of its keep mirroring the lesser dome of the prison tower nearby. Iron rocks like claws clung to the bases of its sheer grey walls. Not the first time he’d seen it—a day earlier he’d caught his first glimpse, at dusk, from a promontory he’d climbed a mile west. Built as if by sorcery in this impossible terrain, at one with the rocks and crags it joined forces with.

  He’d arrived at his goal—at last. After twelve weary months on the journey. And such a long journey—the ways deep and the weather sharp.

  Crouching, just in case, and keeping still as he instinctively checked his weapons, the traveler kept watching. Any sign of movement. Any.

  Not a soul on the battlements. Scuds of snow twisting in a cutting wind. But no sign of a man. The place seemed deserted. As he’d expected from what he’d read of it. But life had taught him that it was always best to make sure. He stayed still.

  Not a sound but the wind. Then—something. A scraping? To his left ahead of him, a handful of pebbles skittered down a bare incline. He tensed, rose slightly, head up between ducked shoulders. Then the arrow whacked into his right shoulder, through the body armor there.

  He staggered a little, grimacing in pain as his hand went to the arrow, raising his head, looking hard at the skein of a rise in the rocks—a small precipice, maybe twenty feet high—which rose before the front of the castle and served as a natural outer bailey. On its ridge there now appeared a man in a dull red tunic with grey outer garments and armor. He bore the insignia of a captain. His bare head was close-shaven, and a scar seared his face, across from right down to left. He opened his mouth in an expression that was part snarl, part smile of triumph, showing stunted and uneven teeth, brown like the tombstones in an unkempt graveyard.

  The traveler pulled at the arrow’s shaft. Though the barbed head snagged on the armor, it had only penetrated the metal, and the point had scarcely penetrated his flesh. He snapped it off the shaft and threw it aside. As he did so he saw a hundred and more armed men, similarly dressed, halberds and swords ready, line up along the crest on either side of the shaven-headed captain. Helmets with nose guards hid their faces, but the black eagle crests on their tunics told the traveler who they were, and he knew what he could expect from them if they took him.

  Was he getting old, to have fallen into a trap so simple? But he’d taken every precaution.

  And it hadn’t succeeded yet.

  He stepped back, ready for them as they poured down to the rugged platform of ground he stood on, fanning out to surround him, keeping the length of their halberds between themselves and their prey. He could sense that despite their numbers, they feared him. His reputation was known, and they were right to be wary.

  He gauged the halberd heads. Double-type: axe and pike.

  He flexed his arms and from his wrists his two lean, grey, deadly hidden-blades sprang. Bracing himself, he deflected the first blow, sensing that it had been hesitant—did they want to try to take him alive? Then they started digging at him from all sides with their weapons, trying to bring him to his knees.

  He whirled, and with two clean movements sliced through the hafts of the nearest halberds, seizing the head of one as it flew through the air, before it could fall to earth; and taking the stump of its haft in his fist, he buried the axeblade in the chest of its former owner.

  They closed in on him then, and he was just in time to stoop low as a rush of air signaled the passage of a swung pike as it sickled over him, missing his bent back by an inch. He swung round savagely and with his left-hand hidden-blade hacked deep into the legs of the attacker who’d stood behind him. With a howl, the man went down.

  The traveler seized the fallen halberd, which a moment earlier had almost ended him, and swiveled it round in the air, slicing the hands off another of his assailants. The hands arched through the air, the fingers curled as if beseeching mercy, a plume of blood like a red rainbow curve trailing behind them.

  That stopped them for a moment, but these men had seen worse sights than that, and the traveler had only a second’s respite before they were closing again. He swung the halberd again and left its blade deep in the neck of a man who, an instant before, had been moving in for the kill. The traveler let go of its pole and retracted his hidden-blades in one action in order to free his hands to seize a sergeant wielding a broadsword, whom he threw bodily into a knot of his troops, seizing his sword from him. He hefted its weight, feeling his biceps tense as he took a double grip and raised it just in time to cleave the helmet of another halberdier, this time coming from his rear left quarter, hoping to blindside him.

  The sword was good. Better for this job than the light scimitar at his side, acquired on his journey. And the hidden-blades for close work. They had never let him down.

  More men were streaming down from the castle. How many would it take to overpower this lone man? They crowded him, but he whirled and jumped to confuse them, seeking freedom from their press by hurling himself over the back of one man, finding his feet, bracing himself, deflecting a sword’s blow with the hard metal bracer on his left wrist, and turning to drive his own sword into that attacker’s side.

  But then—a momentarily lull. Why? The traveler paused, getting his breath. There was a time when he would not have needed to get his breath. He looked up. Still fenced in by the troops in grey chain mail.

  But among them, the traveler suddenly saw another man.

  Another man. Walking between them. Unobserved, calm. A young man in white. Clad as the traveler was, otherwise, and wearing the same cowl over his head, the hood peaked, as his was, to a sharp point at the front, like an eagle’s beak. The traveler’s lips parted in wonder. All seemed silent. All seemed at rest, except for the young man in white, walking. Steadily, calmly, undismayed.

  The young man seemed to walk among the fighting like a man would walk through a field of corn—as if it did not touch or affect him at all. Was that the same buckle fastening his gear, the same as the one the traveler wore? With the same insignia? The insignia that had been branded on the traveler’s consciousness and his life for over thirty years—just as surely as, long ago, his ring finger had been branded?

  The traveler blinked, and when he opened his eyes, the vision—if that was what it had been—had disappeared, and the noise, the smells, the danger, were back, all around him, closing on him, rank upon rank of an enemy he knew at last that he could not overcome or escape from.

  But somehow he did not feel so alone.

  No time to think. They were closing in hard, as scared as they were angry. Blows rained, too many to fend off. The traveler fought hard, took down five more, ten. But he was fighting a hydra with a thousand heads. A big swordsman came up and brought a twenty-pound blade down on him. He raised his left arm to fend it off with the bracer, turning and dropping his own heavy sword as he did so to bring his right-hand hidden-blade into play. But his attacker was lucky. The momentum of his blow was deflected by the bracer, but it was still too powerful to glance off completely. It slid toward the traveler’s left wrist and made contact with the left-hand hidden-blade, snapping it off. At the same moment, the traveler, caught off balance, stumbled on a loose rock at his feet and turned his ankle. He could not stop himself from falling facedown onto the stony ground. And there he lay.
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  Above him, the circle of men closed in, keeping the length of their halberds between themselves and their quarry, still tense, still scared, not yet daring to be triumphant. But the points of their pikes made contact with his back. One move, and he’d be dead.

  And he was not ready for that, yet.

  The crunch of boots on rock. A man approaching. The traveler turned his head slightly to see the shaven-headed captain standing over him. The scar was livid across his face. He bent close enough for the traveler to smell his breath.

  The captain drew the traveler’s hood back just enough to see his face. He smiled as his expectation was confirmed.

  “Ah, the Mentor has arrived. Ezio Auditore da Firenze. We’ve been expecting you—as you have no doubt realized. Must be quite a shock to you, to see your Brotherhood’s old stronghold in our hands. But it was bound to happen. For all your efforts, we were bound to prevail.”

  He stood erect, turned to the troops encircling Ezio, two hundred strong, and snapped out an order. “Take him to the turret cell. Manacle him first, and strongly.”

  They pulled Ezio to his feet and hastily, nervously, bound him fast.

  “Just a short walk and a lot of stairs,” the captain said. “And then you’d better pray. We’ll hang you in the morning.”

  High above them, the eagle continued its search for prey. No one had an eye for it. For its beauty. Its freedom.

  TWO

  The eagle still wheeled in the sky. A pale blue sky, bleached by the sun, though the sun was a little lower. The bird of prey, a dark silhouette, turning and turning, but with purpose. Its shadow fell on the bare rocks far below, torn jagged by them as it passed over.

  Ezio watched through the narrow window—no more than a gash in the thick stone—and his eyes were as restless as the movements of the bird. His thoughts were restless, too. Had he traveled so far and for so long, only for it all to come to this?